Welancora Gallery is pleased to present Ceremony, the first solo exhibition at the gallery of work by Chris Watts. The show opens with a reception on Thursday, October 19 from 6pm- 8pm, and will remain on view through Wednesday, December 20, 2023. The exhibition includes several new works called, ‘ambient paintings’, that are housed within articulated frames made of Nigerian mahogany and held together by hinges, to extend into three dimensional space for the viewer to navigate through and around the work. While other works from this series, and The Spirits that Lend Strength are Invisible, present themselves on the wall.
Existing at the intersection of sculpture and architecture, the spiritual and the metaphysical, Ceremony is an invitation to restructure perceptions of our immediate environment. Through an interplay of transparency and opacity, darkness and light, wooden structures that frame light, space ,and formless color, act as guides in the exploration of sacred meditative spaces and encounters with the immaterial. The sculptural forms echo both light-soaked stained glass windows and traditional Asian and European standing screens, historical intermediaries of the unknown in public and private space.
