Peeling Shadows at Ochi Gallery, Los Angeles

OCHI is pleased to present Peeling Shadows, an online viewing room of new work by New Orleans-based artist Sophia Belkin. The exhibition will be featured on www.ochigallery.com from June 14 through July 19, 2022.

Both ethereal and earthly, Sophia Belkin’s paintings are portals into observation and meditation inspired by forms and ideas that exist in one’s own backyard. Referencing the natural processes of horticulture, germination, and disintegration, each abstracted landscape presents a concentrated view into organic worlds filled with ever changing light and shadow, sublime surfaces equally mysterious and observational. Made from an accumulation of original and sourced photographs, fabric scraps from previous projects, machine embroidered drawings, and hand-dyed fabric, each work is layered and manipulated until an asynchronous sum of parts becomes suddenly harmonious.

Each work contains a nonhierarchical amalgamation of personal photographs taken in Belkin’s own garden, on neighborhood walks, or while visiting a local community garden—new recreations that blossomed during the pandemic lockdown. Belkin begins with dye painting on wet linen—a technique that is free-flowing and unforgiving. Slicing up photographs printed onto polyester and chiffon, Belkin stitches these excerpts of everyday life onto newly dyed bio-cosmic backgrounds using a CNC embroidery machine. Greens, blues, and browns appear throughout each work in reference to the natural hues found in the earth and beyond. Belkin’s surreal compositions are a delicate balance between the tactility of the hand and the uniformity of the machine—a process-oriented union between the natural and the synthetic that reflects the permeability between oneself and one’s environment.

In each painting Belkin zooms between macro and microcosmic, exploring the physical patterns of each leaf, stem, and bud, as well as the frozen compost created from and for these biological forms. An untamable shift of light, color, and space flickers through the work, allowing viewers a chance for introspection on Earthly delights, the shared responsibility in caring for them, and of course how to enjoy them.