Joan Scaglione: Excavation: Landscape of the Psyche

Additional Information

Other associated events: Artist Talk and opening reception, Saturday, April 4, 2:00 pm

In Excavation: Landscape of the Psyche, Scaglione will transform the gallery to become a space of the interiority of the psyche. Scaglione’s sculptural language amongst other elements includes huts, ladders, stairs, beds, earth, glass and rock piles, of all of which has led her into areas that lie beneath the surface of reality connected to the earth. While deeply embedded in the earth, the artist is seeking to create a “combustion” in the spiritual imagination that implies the potential for transcendence. Ladders and stairs move one into upper and lower realms; huts provide interior containment for intimate, transformative space; bed is the space where the body surrenders to the subconscious; earth is the fertile substance of decomposition and re-growth. An essential counterpoint to the materials and structures of the work is the immaterial aspect of video imagery. Thus, the artist will use video together with this material to engage the imagination and the spiritual senses on a phenomenological level.

Scaglione’s installation includes built structures that will include ladders, parts of a small hut, a bed, figurative elements, materials including bricks, earth, clay, charred wood, ashes and looped elements of video playing on small monitors embedded within the works, depicting performative actions and aspects of nature which metaphorically allude to the interior state. The walls, floor and ceiling will be utilized by the artist and completely transformed.

Joan Scaglione, Excavation: Landscape of the Psyche (Installation VIew), 2009.