Stone House Art Gallery is pleased to present its eighth exhibition of 2021, A Lush and Ferocious Wilderness, by artist and photographer Forrest Simmons. In this continuing body of work, Simmons transforms the gallery into a darkly enclosed space illuminated by seven LED backlit photographs. Each work of comparable proportions and framing is an investigation into the layered realm of human consciousness. By using a genre-agnostic approach in his photography, Simmons allows tableaux, documentary, and still life to coexist unbound from traditional taxonomy in this mirrored exploration into the complexity of self.
A Lush and Ferocious Wilderness is a journey through multiple levels of human consciousness. It makes contact with the fundamental, yet evasive, human longings for spiritual fulfillment, for answers to the mysteries of time and space, and for a resolution to questions of meaning and purpose. Images of solitary figures both evade the camera lens and confront it as if to encounter oneself in an altered state of mind. Two images abandon the figural self completely, rendering instead the fantastical state of being alive through light, color, and fragmented pieces of reality. The project seeks to make visible the innermost parts of ourselves-- longings and desires; dreams and nightmares; ideas and thought fragments; idealized fantasies and cold realities. It does this through luminary transformation of the gallery space, where a feeling of isolation is enhanced in the small and subtly illuminated room. The frames of Simmons work are figuratively respondent to the average viewer, while being uniformly constructed and displayed with unbothered power cords dangling from frame to floor to outlet. The enclosed space becomes one for independent inquisition and meditation on self through the lens of the artist.
The works in A Lush and Ferocious Wilderness are manifestations of three realms: The Cosmos as Metonyms, The Imagined World, and The World We Inhabit. Each utilizes materials from the natural world to reference the stars and cycles of life, death, and rebirth present on Earth. The Cosmos As Metonym are poetic interpretations of the heavens. The Imagined World are tableaux that combine the familiar with the fantastic to meld the wonders around us with the wanderings of the mind. The World We Inhabit are photographs of things we experience with the senses—the sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes that shape our sense of being alive.
The concept of light and darkness is essential to our own perception of human consciousness. A Lush and Ferocious Wilderness seeks to realize this in efforts of forming a forever-incomplete picture of the knowable and unknowable. Embracing our knowledge and ignorance, we walk on this mortal coil, alone in the dark, together.
A Lush and Ferocious Wilderness is on view now by appointment only through August 2021.
