Science and magic share a faculty – observation. Both practices involve looking and thinking, attempting prediction, and aim, finally, for recreation – discovering something underneath what’s visible. There’s an intuition at work that proposes that what is seen can be re-seen, that order can be reordered and that something powerful can be created, discovered or found therein.
Accompanying Katie DeGroot’s second solo show, Resplendent, the group of artists assembled by DeGroot for An Observant Nature swing between these friendly poles. In the heart of NYC is a small cauldron of alchemy where light is somehow both blazing and gauzy, where natural forms disassemble and redefine themselves, where brightly colored shapes unexpectedly reveal passages through thicket spaces, where dreamy mountains shift and shuffle like a deck of cards seemingly dragged about by a gentle wind, and where a moment of quiet sanctuary is undermined by subtle shifts in color.
