smoke the moon is pleased to announce a show near to our celestial hearts, The Moon Belongs to Everyone, ushering in winter’s contemplative spirit. On view from November 17 to December 24, The Moon Belongs to Everyone presents works in dialogue with the moon and its emissaries by 19 contemporary artists: Ibrahim Abusitta, Will Bruno, Hye-Shin Chun, Lena Christakis, Aryo Toh Djojo, Cory Feder, Maren Jensen, Chaz John, Emily Margarit Mason, Diego Medina, Mike Nudelman, Jessica Palermo, Anya Pertel, Javi Ramirez, Jieun Reiner, Corey Reucker, Jeremy Shockley and Margaret R. Thompson.
A celebration of the inverting light of colder months, The Moon Belongs to Everyone lingers in the moment between illumination and shadow–reminding us that the world may become new again if you catch it at the right slant of moonlight. Based in New Mexico and beyond, the artists in the show present intimate, enduring visions that weave together lucid abstractions, mystic archetypes and hazy realisms.
Long-time friend of the gallery and Santa Fe local, Will Bruno, will present new large scale works on canvas that consider the moon’s influence through his signature experimental landscape compositions. Bruno’s plein air-based artistic practice is infused with a fascination with found-figurines and ephemera, ornamenting his vast canvases with recurring esoteric specters. Bruno’s practice is also indebted to the narrative structure of comics, and he fuses this practice with landscape painting to produce a singular vision: scenes appear like a map to a cosmic desert universe and the artist invites us to wander this plane alongside him.
Influenced by both a digital flattening and surrealist portals, New York City-based Lena Christakis utilizes her canvas to create sparse hypnagogic scenes of accumulated diaristic symbology. Intuitively arranged objects in un(der)defined environments speak simultaneously to multiple realities of the human condition–loneliness, vanitas, boredom; alongside beauty, humor, and pleasure.
Working out of his ancestral lands of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Diego Medina utilizes fantastical imagery to invoke mystical experiences in his work. The spiritual and the sensual are intertwined through the use of Indigenous motifs, scriptural exegesis, Christian esotericism, and an ancestral relationship to place. His paintings thus emerge as in a dream, unknown sigils float across a retreating horizon; embodied forms appear as if transmitted from an astral plane.
One of the seven “Celestial Governors” in ancient Greek cosmology, the moon was known as the goddess Selene, derived from Selas, meaning light. The moon acted as a sort of anti-sun, illuminating the darkness of the sun’s retreat. Because she produced no light of her own, the moon was believed to act as an emissary of light, helping other planets transmute their illuminated visions down to the physical plane. The ultimate metaphysical translator, it was through the moon’s transport that heavenly will was made manifest. Each piece in The Moon Belongs to Everyone has its own ethereal mythos, forming a collection of charged works that map the moon in delightful new ways.
Please join us on Friday, November 17, 2023 from 6:00 to 8:00pm for the opening reception of The Moon Belongs To Everyone.