Three Fates | Ambreen Butt, Chitra Ganesh, Eva Schlegel at Gallery Wendi Norris
Three Fates | Ambreen Butt, Chitra Ganesh, Eva Schlegel
GALLERY WENDI NORRIS OFFSITE EXHIBITION
January 13 – January 30, 2022
Fort Mason Pier 2
2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco, CA, 94123
Exhibition Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 12 – 6pm or by appointment
Animation screenings at 1 pm and 5 pm daily.
Gallery Wendi Norris is pleased to present Three Fates, featuring works by artists Ambreen Butt, Chitra Ganesh and Eva Schlegel at Fort Mason Center Pier 2 in San Francisco. Three Fates will be the seventh exhibition in the gallery’s innovative offsite exhibition model.
In ancient cultures across the globe, Fate was understood as a cosmic force that existed beyond the control of human activity. For the Greeks, it was personified by three women so powerful that even the Olympian deities were subject to their decisions. Clotho (from whose name the English word “cloth” is derived) would spin the thread of an individual’s life. Lachesis would measure and allot it; finally Atropos—the inflexible one, the oldest of the three—would cut it, thus determining the moment of death.
As we reflect on the past year and prepare to enter a new one, beset by global powers so vast (political, medical, economic, climatological) as to feel impersonal in their reach, Gallery Wendi Norris presents the work of three artists whose diverse experience and work examine, reflect, and reckon with the vexing problems and delightful possibilities that Fate provides. Three Fates is an opportunity to reconsider in the present moment the primeval concept of Fate, as well as the role it may (or may not) play in our individual and collective lives.
Elaborating with humor and conviction a mythological multiverse of her own invention, Chitra Ganesh (New York, b. 1975, Brooklyn-based) meditates on themes of reflection and regeneration in times of uncertainty. Her practice considers the power of collective dreams, collective consciousness, and universally held archetypes that are both primordial and future-facing. Three Fates features Multiverse Dreaming, a new suite of twelve digital prints that were recently on view at the Bronx Museum’s Born in Flames: Feminist Futures; as well as The Scorpion Gesture, a series of five animated videos commissioned by the Rubin Museum New York, include accompanying sound scores by Chitra Ganesh. The Scorpion Gesture will screen daily in Pier 2’s Grey Box, a black box designed for film and video productions. All five videos use the figures of Padmasambhava, known as the Second Buddha, and Maitreya, the Future Buddha, as points of departure. The animation works build on Ganesh’s long standing investigation of mythology, iconographies and pictorial traditions across geography and time to explore alternative narratives and possible futures.