TATYANA MURRAY & SANDRA KANTANEN:LUSTRE

PRESS RELEASE

’74 Online Exhibition brought to you in collaboration with Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, presenting works by Tatyana Murray & Sandra Kantanen

LUSTRE is an exploration of the natural landscape through each artist’s varied technological and physical process of image representation.

Tatyana Murray’s layered glass works immerse the viewer in an ethereal construction of light, exploring the fragility of nature and the dissonance between man-made and natural. In her most recent “Tree of Light” series, Murray creates floating images through the physically laborious process of drilling and etching on each transparent sheet of glass, which are then stacked one upon the other. Murray’s mark making is revealed only through the refraction of LED light, elevating the industrial materials to a spiritual meditation. It is only through the light itself that the floating image reveals itself, illuminating each tree by rendering it into a transcendental state.

Sandra Kantanen’s images are aesthetic excursions into a world of illusion oscillating between painting and photography. Inspired by the history of Chinese landscape painting, Kantanen uses a digital paintbrush to record and layer images. Photographs of forests, meadows of flowers, and lakes are manipulated through a digital process in which she stretches the pixels to appear as if dripping in paint. Ultimately, the physical sites she photographs serve as the foundation of the work to further explore reality rooted in photography as a medium. Embellished with light and color, the final images reflect conjured visions of a fantastical landscape, detached from a distinct time or location to investigate the fragility of our natural world in its current state.

The driving principle of light lies at the essence of the work and photography itself. While Murray’s layers are physically assembled and Kantanen’s are digitally rendered, both artists draw with light, examining a natural landscape that is idealistic and romantic yet simultaneously mysterious and fragile.

ABOUT ARTISTS

Tatyana Murray (B. 1973, London) lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited in New York City, London, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Cannes, Venice, the Bahamas, California, and the Hamptons in solo and group exhibitions. She has earned widespread recognition in several publications such as The New York Times, The Evening Standard, Connaissance des Arts, and Surface Magazine amongst others.

Sandra Kantanen (B. 1974, Helsinki) lives and works in Hangö, Finland. Her most recent exhibitions include shows at The New World Trade Center in Jakarta, the Denver Art Museum and the Rovaniemi art museum in Korundi (Finland). Her works are included in several collections such as The J.Paul Getty Museum, US; HAM Helsinki Art Museum, FI; Fondazione.