Ebony G. Patterson; Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Photo by Frank Ishman.
This summer, experience the seductive beauty of gardens through the eyes of celebrated contemporary artist Ebony G. Patterson. Known for her lavishly detailed mixed media installations, Patterson brings her signature style to the New York Botanical Garden’s landscape and galleries, in a major site-specific exhibition featuring breathtaking and provocative displays of art and nature.
The result of a yearslong engagement with the Botanical Garden to explore its collections and settings “…things come to thrive…in the shedding…in the molting…” is on view Saturday, May 27 through Sunday, September 17, 2023.
“…in the waiting…in the weighting…”, 2021; Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
A multifaceted artist, Patterson utilizes painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and video to create a body of work that uses beauty as a tool to address global social and political injustices. “Patterson seduces the viewer into acknowledging a darker truth lurking ominously beneath the surface. Upon closer inspection, the figures in these embellished paper works are disembodied, un-whole,” writes Monique Meloche Gallery. “While the bright, effusive visual cues on the surface of her work suggest vivifying celebration, these signifiers point to the opposite. Their ghostly forms hover amidst a tangle of flora and fauna, plants which themselves might harbor a secret poison.”
Detail of “…in the waiting…in the weighting…”, 2021; Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
The first visual artist ever to embed within the institution for an immersive residency, Patterson’s work will captivate Garden visitors with the beauty of exotic flora and garden-inspired installations – from a monumental peacock sculpture to swarms of glitter-encrusted vultures. Working directly with the Garden’s grounds and resources the exhibition will see sculptures, installations, and interventions with living plants come together to explore entanglements of race, gender and colonialism while inviting visitors to contemplate their own relationships with gardens and the natural world.
This event kicks off with a dynamic conversation between the artist and Thelma Golden, the world’s premier curator of art of the African Diaspora and Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Click here for more information.
Photos courtesy of the New York Botanical Gardens.
Cover image courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery; Photo by Frank Ishman.
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