Nebulita, Ukiyo-e, protoplans + Places, Eos Floating Worlds statement
From the Eos and Isole shows at Traywick Contemporary:
“The title of her new body of work, Eos, is a reference to the Greek goddess of the dawn, and to beginnings full of both possibility and portent. In Eos Gantner investigates ways in which forms and systems within the natural world collide with ideas and information from our technological age. Both worlds rely on each other through parasitic and cooperative relationships that collapse into colorful explosions — a mesmerizing visual of a contemporary Big Bang.
In the series “Vis Viva”, she has done away with the gravitationally rooted worlds of her past works. Images burst and reach, and forms join together in unlikely and enmeshed layers. Gantner’s distinctive hybrid imagery, created from mysterious unions of the natural and manmade worlds, springs forth in unpredictable and engaging ways.
In her new body of work, Gantner continues to imagine landscapes freed from gravity, creating intricate floating worlds with layers of hand- and computer-cut vinyl applied to paper, acrylic panel and wall surfaces. Typically a material with commercial applications, vinyl furthers her interest in our experience of a natural world that is infused with artifice.
The title of the show, Isole, or islands in Italian, simultaneously evokes the independence and isolation of these suspended spaces. Gantner is interested in the tension between these two states of being: her floating islands are seemingly self-sustaining, yet contain elements that extend and emanate from her compositions as if seeking to connect with something external.
New, geometric forms appear throughout Gantner’s latest body of work. Expanding circles, hexagonal patterns, and other rectilinear shapes exist among more naturalistic elements. The juxtaposition of the organic and the mechanical in Gantner’s “protoplaces” references the coexistence of digital and organic processes in a world increasingly dominated by technology. The hybrid spaces the artist creates are metaphoric reflections of the fraught relationships between containment and community, chaos and control that characterize contemporary life.”