Asperitas: Solo Exhibition At Art Produce Gallery

Art Produce Gallery is pleased to announce Asperitas, an exhibition of 15 paintings by Melanie Taylor, accompanied with 15 haiku poems by artist Lucas Michael, on view January 8th - March 2nd 2024. The exhibition presents a series of paintings that each bear the title of a haiku poem. Melanie Taylor’s paintings are interpretations of the natural environment and a consideration of memory, the passage of time, and the margin between reality and imagination. In the paintings marks and gestural notations reveal forms observed in the landscape, allowing for process and the role of chance to exist within a visceral sense of place. This coexistence of the unpredictable and deliberate relates to the factual and uncontrollable in nature and its vulnerability to climate change. The collection of fifteen haikus was composed by Lucas Michael in February 2022, begun in NYC and completed during a stay in Uruguay while surrounded by nature. They are created through a process using word games and a form of automatic writing that combines chance with composition.

The tension between chance and deliberation connects the painting with the haiku. The unexpected juxtaposition of words in the haiku relates to the exposed process in the paintings where marks are simultaneously intentional and uncontrolled. This juxtaposition invites the viewer to make meaning from the paintings and haiku. The manipulation of language and paint allows anarchy into art making where thought and motion are made visible.

The exhibition is named after the asperitas cloud formation: asperitas are rare and fleeting, often arising in unstable atmospheric conditions where the wind direction changes. Their name is derived from the Latin word asperare, meaning to roughen, make fierce or aggravate.