THE NOW: Fever Dreams
May 16th – August 16th, 2024
Tara Sabharwal, Herstory Protector Parts, 2023, Oil on canvas, 6′ x 7′
Pen + Brush is excited to present THE NOW: Fever Dreams, a group exhibition opening May 16 featuring vignettes of work by artists: Antonia Bara, Heather Brammeier, Martha Bone, Sandra Cavanagh, Angela Fraleigh, Crystal Marshall, Tara Sabharwal, Heather Marie Scholl, and Jia Sung. This is P+B’s fourth iteration of Now exhibitions, an ongoing series that brings focus to artists who are the undiscovered “ones to watch” and are creating works that capture the pulse of today. THE NOW: Fever Dreams builds on this evolving nature of “the now” as it pertains to contemporary art and temporality by bringing together works by eight artists that share more than just a dream-like quality—they share in their intensity and feverish depictions of liminal space and time. Works on view merge visions of unsustainable pleasure, anxieties, and the mythological feminine. Hallucinatory scenes lacking reason are met with skillful compositions that refute traditional hierarchies of order and, like a fever dream, react to an untenable environment. In some cases, like that of Crystal Marshall, divine visions are shown. These visions criticize society while depicting transcendental beings who are freed from chaos in their post-human existence. Larger works, like those by Sandra Cavanagh, Angela Fraleigh, and Tara Sabharwal, merge social, political, moral, literary, or historical components with a dream-like rejection of order. These works, together with Heather Brammeier’s installation (premiering June 6th), and smaller-scale works by Antonia Bara, Crystal Marshall, and Heather Marie Scholl, come together to point out hidden meanings that, at times, disrupt coercive power structures and continue a dialogue on the relevance of contemporary art. The Now: Fever Dreams tests limits of definitions surrounding “established” contemporary art while bringing together current socially relevant themes of feminism, crisis, globalism, and indeed, psychoanalysis to inform its aesthetic.
