FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

P-O-T-B-O-I-L-E-R-S

February 18th - April. 16th, 2023
Opening reception: Saturday February 18th, from 7-9pm

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Quinn Harrelson is pleased to announce P-O-T-B-O-I-L-E-R-S, an exhibition of rare and extraordinary orchids presented alongside known and unknown masterpieces of the 20th and 21st centuries. The artists in this exhibition are Henry Ossawa Tanner, Larry Johnson, Dozie Kanu, Sarah Rapson, Pierre Huyghe, Ser Serpas, Samuel R. Delany, Leilah Weinraub, and Janine Antoni. It includes living specimens of the following species of Orchids: Habenaria radiata, Anacheilium radiatum, Seidenfadenia mitrata (Aerides mitratum), Paphiopedilum gratrixianum, and Rhynchostylis Coelestis. P-O-T-B-O-I-L-E-R-S will be the inaugural exhibition at Harrelson’s Los Angeles gallery, located at 3201 La Cienega Ave.

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The exhibition intends to draw out the alien sophistication, formal density, and beguiling intrigue that orchids and artworks share. Both are somewhat indescribable entities that function similarly as sites of seduction and exchange. The show was provoked in part by the idea that the biological process of evolution and the creative process of artistic invention are deeply intertwined. Like evolution, artistic invention is mechanistically diverse, unruly, durational, highly reciprocal, and has long evaded understanding. Contemporary conversations about art largely forgo substantive investigations into the creative process. Today, the question of how and why people make things has been all but abandoned, and with it artistic origination has been reduced in turn to something like immaculate conception, the spontaneous eruption of the imagination. P-O-T-B-O-I-L-E-R-S conceives of biological reproduction, and with it, the nearly imperceptible adaptation of ever-changing species to their shifting environments from one generation to the next, as a conceptual model for artistic emergence. It proposes that through this lens, the unique mechanics of artistic production might become newly appreciable. After all, what is evolution, a process wrought out in successive iteration, duplication, and randomness, if not a prolonged intimacy between material and its expression no different than the uncanny calibration of pigment into volumes of human flesh?

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The exhibition will be on view from February 18th through March 31st, with gallery hours Friday to Sunday, 11:00AM to 5:00PM and by appointment. For more information, please contact the gallery at 305-343-9997 or info@quinnharrelsongallery.com.