Mirando la flor (Press release)

Sicardi Gallery invites you to celebrate the opening of Mirando la flor at a reception from 6-8 pm on Thursday, March 10, 2016.

The exhibition takes its title from a photo-video installation by Miguel Ángel Rojas. In this work, the act of looking at a flower becomes weighted with the passage of time and the losses accrued over a life’s journey. Rojas’s Mirando la flor, then, also emblematizes the exhibition’s central premise: our experiences in and with nature allow us to see our own best and worst truths. “Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture,” writes Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1836 essay, “Nature.” The works in this exhibition consider the relationships we build with the natural world, how we try to organize it, find solace in it, mark our lives by it, and destroy it.

Curated by Laura August, in conjunction with the 2016 FotoFest Biennial, Mirando la flor includes photography, sculpture, video, and mixed media works by six gallery artists: Maria Fernanda Cardoso (b. 1963, Colombia), Thomas Glassford (b. 1963, USA), Miguel Angel Ríos (b. 1943, Argentina), Miguel Angel Rojas (b. 1946, Colombia), Oscar Muñoz (b. 1951, Colombia), and Melanie Smith (b. 1965, England).