Exhibitions
KAREN SEAPKER: CIRCUITIES
Zeitgeist Gallery / 516 Hagan St. , #100 March 7, 2020 - April 25, 2020
Karen Seapker
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Zeitgeist is pleased to announce Karen Seapker's third solo show at the gallery. Seapker continues her use of bold color and line to explore ideas of motherhood, the environment and the patterns in our lives.
Karen Seapker received her MFA in 2009 from Hunter College in New York, NY. She has exhibited her work in various group shows in various cities including New York, London, and Shanghai. She participated in the Pittsburgh Biennial at The Andy Warhol Museum. She is currently featured in Crystal Bridges Museum's State of the Art 2020. She lives and works in Nashville, TN.
Artist Statement:
Last Spring, we began a garden. It included a circular path that I walked repeatedly, a humble backyard ritual. The consistency was comforting, with the changes throughout the growing season bringing welcomed surprises. I began to consider how walking that circular path felt like the physical practice of moving my body in time to the internal rhythms that my life had recently established.
As a mother of small children, I am immersed in daily and seasonal rituals of family life, day after day, month after month... patterns, routines and traditions create their own rhythm. And yet, I also live with the strange and simultaneous truth that consistency is a mirage.
Becoming a mother comes with constant reminders of ephemerality. My body was a transitory container that my children passed through. Currently, they seek comfort, support and shelter from me, but one day will become independent.
Beyond my own family, we are raising our children at a time when our planet faces significant and irreparable environmental threats. Predictability, consistency and the calm suggestion of a perfect circle does not suffice. With consideration to the ways that our family fits within the contexts of the greater world, the environment, the relentless attention economy, the current political climate, etc., there are swirling, churning, contrapuntal and dissonant rhythms at play.
Painting (like gardening, like parenting) requires the gentle balance between controlled action and attentive observation. Decisive action is essential but not without a sensitivity to where and when to actively submit, to make space for something or someone, or to move in a different direction. The paintings in this show do not offer a solution or singular direction for navigating the tumult, but they provide what feels like a slow surrounding of something that I need to continually practice, and give myself over to, again and again.
Check out the exhibition during the Virtual Art Crawl hosted by The Nashville Art Gallery Association on their YouTube Channel, May 2nd at 6pm.
