Closing Party Thursday July 27 6p – 8p
Opening Reception: Friday, June 30, 2023 6pm – 8pm
On View: June 30–July 28, 2023
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 1–6pm

Westbeth Gallery, 57 Bethune Street, New York, NY 10014

“Throwing light onto the unnatural, reflecting on and exploring new connections with non-human systems.”

Westbeth Gallery is pleased to present a group show curated by Valérie Hallier. Unnatural Processes is an exhibition that asks the questions: What is “Nature”? What is “Natural”?

Artists:: Aston Philip, Christina Massey, Jean Foos, Katherine Bennett, Linda Loh, Roxane Revon, Tessa Grundon and Valérie Haller.

Nature is an all encompassing entity that exists without humans. Yet, it is impossible to think of humanity as an entity that could exist without nature. Seeing humanity and all its actions as part of nature is more reasonable. French anthropologist, Philippe Descola, observes 4 ways of “being” in the world as humans: animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism. If we agree that our thought processes are firmly welded into Western philosophy, prizing the rational, scientific, and logical, we can then agree that we embody naturalism. Yet as artists we are open to other ways of being, thinking, and seeing. The work of the eight international artists featured in this show revisits our contemporary relationship with the non-human. A great variety of mediums and processes are all centered around new ways to visualize and interact with our environment: virtual, real, or re-created.

Linda Loh’s virtual world reveals fleeting spaces beyond everyday experiences. Roxane Revon maps out the underground ecosystem of specific locations. Similarly, Tessa Grundon’s work is rooted in “places”, reflecting on our current Anthropocene. Aston Philip creates an ecosystem of the painters tools and materials with each part incorporated and recycled. Jean Foos, Valérie Hallier and Christina Massey’s mixed media sculptures each bring new life to discarded objects, eloquently commenting on consumerism and climate change. Foos, Hallier and Massey also give a nod to Surrealism as they fabricate pieces with unexpected, “unnatural” combinations. Katherine Bennett’s interactive installation is inspired by hidden networks drawing upon marine organisms and communication networks.

About the Artists
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Aston Philip is a painter who has expanded his practice into a process based ecosystem. This includes collaging, weaving and sculpting cured paint-skins and chips and incorporating the tools of painting back into his works. Aston’s fascination with the interconnected systems and relationships in the natural world direct his own purview of painting.

Jean Foos paints patterns on found objects. Stacking shapes to make a totem or arranging branches into a colorful standing bundle, she gives them a new power and dimension. The title of Foos’ tower, Convulsive Beauty in the Fur Teacup Bar, evokes Méret Oppenheim’s surrealist objects and her thinking about the concrete realization of irrationality. “I respond to shapes, natural (fallen tree branches) and unnatural (manufactured packaging material). I am not a sculptor, per se, my forms are available ready-made.”

Valérie Hallier improvises with collected pressed flower petals of many colors and shapes to create abstract collages that reflect her inner workings. Inspired by Surrealist automatism, the artist tries to suppress conscious control over the visual result. This process expresses the longing for a communion with the world around her.

–Hallier’s work follows an integrative continuum that utilizes technology
as tool and object, generating an exquisite tension between the humanistic
and mechanistic sense of Being.” —Judith Escalona

Christina Massey’s mixed media sculptures are created with blown glass, repurposed aluminum sourced from craft beer cans, and other found materials such as wire, copper and plastics. The sculptures appear organic, like surreal alien plant forms. These bulbs act as crystal balls in a sense, a commentary on the predictive nature of trying to measure and adapt to Climate Change.

Katherine Bennett’s interactive installation, Luciferins, is about making network traffic perceptible, and by extension, our awareness of the ubiquitous digital infrastructure that surrounds, connects, and ultimately tracks us. Viewers walk through large felted structures, awakening graphical portals depicting invisible network traffic of popular websites, sound from other locations, and
airwave activity.

“One’s physicality makes the work come to life—just as a swimmer makes bioluminescent marine organisms illuminate, generating luciferins (a light-emitting compound). Suddenly, one can see the invisible activity that surrounds them.”
—Katherine Bennett

Roxane Revon is a multidisciplinary artist and scenographer examining the inner workings of “nature” and intrigued by the symbiotic relationships between humans and vegetal beings. She makes her viewers question their relationship to the earth and the various forms of life that grow in and out of it. Revon zooms in on the invisible, making us take a deeper look at our own origins and foundations. She brings us to a place of restored fertility and rebirth, allowing for new ways of grounding and reviving visions of the self.

Linda Loh navigates the elusive form and materiality of digital space with transformed sources of light. Motivated by curiosity, she thinks digital media is as slippery as the nature of mind; her abstract composites leave little obvious for the rational mind to grasp. Her work for this exhibition is a luminous, color-saturated, non-ordinary ‘world’, revealing fleeting spaces beyond everyday experience.

Tessa Grundon uses material from nature as well as man-made elements. Her work is deeply rooted to the history of a place, as she considers the geological age with human activity being the dominant influence on the landscape and climate. Our environment is ever-changing: the rising and increasingly polluted tides; man’s effect on community and landscape; and man’s shared visual language of natural forms. All of these come together is Grundon’s work as she explores contemporary environmental issues.

ARTIST BIOS
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Katherine Bennett is a new media, fiber, and installation artist, who builds interactive systems exploring our emerging futures of the digital experience. She codes and incorporates sensors, electronics, fibers and computer vision to create her pieces. She is fascinated by the liminal spaces created by digital communities and the cultural changes that result. She is a NYSCA recipient and has been awarded many grants, including Harvestworks. She has exhibited at Inst-Int, ISEA, Maryland Art Place, ZKM, Indianapolis Art Center and The University of the Arts. She runs LadyK Studios in Brooklyn.
https://www.katherinebennett.net/ @ladykstudios/

Jean Foos paints found objects with rich colors and patterned surfaces. For her site-specific installations Foos favors ad hoc urban settings, such as long-abandoned buildings and community gardens. Her sculptures have been exhibited at Local Project Art Space LIC, Hal Bromm Gallery, Empirical Nonsense Gallery, York College (CUNY), King Manor Museum, Susquehanna Art Museum, La Mama Galleria, Governors Island (4heads AIR), and Le Petit Versailles Garden.
https://jeanfoos.com/ @foosnyc

Tessa Grundon is a British artist working on both sides of the Atlantic. Her work is rooted in “place” using elements of the landscape to explore environmental issues. In recent years she has been based on Governors Island in NYC Harbor working with arts and science organizations including SWALE, Urban Soil Institute, NYU Gallatin’s “Wetlab”, Works on Water, Underwater New York and the Virtual Volcano Observatory focusing on engagement with the environment and education. She works with Artist Space as a teaching artist on the Lower East Side and past residencies and partnerships include Brooklyn Navy Yard, Art.Earth, I-Park Foundation, Wave Hill, PLACE Collective and Sail Britain.
www.tessagrundon.com @tessa.grundon

Born in France, Valérie Hallier came to NYC with a Fulbright Scholarship and graduated from the SVA in Computer Arts. Early multimedia work received prizes at ACM Siggraph, SCAN Arts Symposium, Ars Electronica and Anima Mundi. Using a wide swath of mediums, Hallier redefines the art of portraiture and self-portraiture in the forms of immersive installations, interactive public art and two-dimensional renderings. Hallier is the recipient of grants from Contemporary Art Foundation, NYSCA, and Wave Farm. Her work has been shown internationally. Residencies include Pioneer Works, NARS Foundation, Trestle ArtSpace, Harvestworks, LMCC Arts Center and 4Heads Portal in NYC.
www.valeriehallier.com @multiplemedia_artist

Linda Loh Linda Loh is an Australian visual artist whose multimedia works navigate digital space with transformed sources of light. Before and after graduating from SVA in 2021 with an MFA in Computer Arts, she has participated in various international exhibition projects. Most recently she was engaged in an innovative curatorial project, culminating in an exhibition at Untitled Miami in December 2022.
https://lindaloh.com/ @__lindaloh__ (2 underscores at each end)

Christina Massey is a mixed media artist using repurposed materials in her nature inspired abstractions. Her work ranges from painting to sculpture and installation and has won several awards including two Brooklyn Arts Council grants, an FST StudioProject award and the EFARBPS SIP Fellowship. Her sculptural paintings can currently be seen at the off-site location for Court Tree Collective in midtown Manhattan and as a solo installation at the Gallery for ARTFul Medicine at Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx, NY.
www.cmasseyart.com @cmasseyart

Aston Philip exhibits his unique paintings, paint tapestries and colorful paint brush installations with Beekman Arts Club projects and galleries. Aston has previously been included in notable exhibitions in Australia including the Sulman Prize for painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Award at Artspace, Sydney. This month he is simultaneously showing in the exhibition “Wild Things’ with the Beekman Art’s Club in Hopewell Junction NY.
www.astonphilip.com @aston_philip

Roxane Revon is a multidisciplinary artist and scenographer examining the inner workings of “nature” and intrigued by the symbiotic relationships between humans and vegetal beings. She recently collaborated with the ABT choreographer Jessica Lang on “Shades of Spring” at the Joyce Theater and is currently showing her artwork and installations at Cinema Supply Gallery in Chelsea.
www.roxanerevon.com @roxane_revon