‘What do we do with the body?’

CHRISTINE KELLY

SIRAN LIU

SU MELO

KATIE SALTOUN

JULIE SEYLER

KATHERINE VERDICKT

SELINA WAGNER

April 12 - May 11, 2024 [by appointment]

Opening reception Friday, April 12, 6-9 pm

PRESS RELEASE:

‘What do we do with the body?’ is The Pack’s first exhibition in its new physical location. Established in January 2021, we began in the thick of the virtual: shoulders-up, pet on lap, pants unimportant, shared screen. Now in 3-D, we are pleased to present a selection of figurative works by our earliest members: a collective embodiment from behind the screen.

“We pretend we have no shadow and try to escape into our heads. Powerful energies are locked in our bodies. Eventually they rebel, usually in illness.

Sometimes people will paint a picture of their body, in terms of color, and there will be black areas where they cannot see any image. Very interesting things often go on around those areas. As soon as the person puts an image there, it starts to transform. Flowers turn into false teeth, which turn into arrows, and the transformation process goes on. The energy starts to move, light comes into that area. I don’t think we’ve begun to touch the power of imagery in the body.”

— Marion Woodman

“What do we do with the body?” asks the murderer, the bereaved, the living, the algorithm.

With policy and policing that favor the willfully divided— a dualistic inheritance of mind over matter— we are asked to awaken from a long somatic sleep.

“What do we do in a body that feels?” asks the lover, the mother, the healer, the artist.

Do we bear all the life we can possibly carry? Or get down on all fours, with our animal sense? Can we spin the earth into relational webs? Make drawings that disintegrate defunct legacies? And what about joy? A smile at suffering’s bedside. A laugh gushing out of institutional etiquette. A sexy pose of nostalgic jouissance. Perhaps these acts, churning mind into matter, can be framed as nondual awakening.