Continuing through May 2, 2026
“Emergence” juxtaposes the works of two artists, a painter and a ceramicist, whose shared aesthetic deals with transformation and transcendence. The show’s title was chosen to indicate change and transmit the idea of an emergency, while also connecting those ideas to personal, socio-political, and environmental themes. In the broadest sense, “Emergence” is a conversation that reflects on the enduring power of art to refresh and reinvigorate culture.
Yulia Pinkusevich, a native of Ukraine, conjures painted atmospheres that signify a variety of forces and meanings. Many of her works portray fires and flames, symbolic conflagrations that serve as bridges between destruction and creation.
Pinkusevich’s “Sacred Flames” is a series of nine paintings on arched window-like canvases that depict a variety of stylized flames, ashes, and smoke. Some incorporate dangling relics such as bones, beads and stones that add ritualistic implications. “Fire is the element of vision, passion, and beginnings,” notes Pinkusevich. “It is the original creative force — the spark before anything exists.” Another group of four paintings feature blue flames that the artist conceived “with intent to burn down the patriarchy and regenerate our earth.”
“Rupture,” which she describes as both “cosmological and intimate,” depicts an explosive universe that is barely constrained by hints of glowing skeletal architecture. A balance of delicacy and propulsive energy can be felt in the luminous cloud-like chaos at the composition’s center. The work implies some symbolism, representing the disfunction and healing that occur in many families. As meaningful as this is, however, “Rupture” can be appreciated for its visual splendor alone.
“Breath of Life (Air)” mixes ash, glitter and dry pigment to generate a nebulous and varied overview of life forces. Although Pinksusevich’s work leans towards abstraction, “Breath of Life (Air)” is full of tangible visual suggestions, such as a cresting wave, a swirling flock of birds, and vestiges of landscape elements. The aesthetic of the work links it to ancient Chinese scroll paintings, both in its subdued color and its evocation of underlying natural forces. By evoking cycles of life, death, and rebirth, “Breath of Life (Air)” invokes universal themes to address contemporary anxieties.
Cathy Lu’s ceramic sculptures are likewise rooted in ancient Chinese culture while simultaneously reaching towards current cultural issues of identity and belonging. Her contributions to “Emergence” are idiosyncratic incense burners inspired by her early experience of incense lighting in China and Taiwan. As Lu explains, her interest is not in replicating the traditional forms of the burners, “but in transforming or altering them to reflect my own upbringing and experiences of Asian Diasporas.”
Four of Lu’s pieces take their form from peaches, a traditional Chinese symbol of longevity and prosperity. In her reinvention, the peaches have morphed into complicated amalgams of desire and repulsion that exude peach pits from their skins and bristle with incense. In symbolic terms, they are portraits of the artist’s attempts to navigate between Chinese and American culture. Like her surprising green and white peaches, Lu understands that “we are all complex and may not fit whatever stereotypes are put upon us or that we have internalized.” The peach sculptures are about transition and the possibilities that open up in states of betweenness.
A large floor piece, consisting of tubular ceramic segments, “Nuwa’s arm with Incense (floor)” references the Chinese mythological mother goddess, Nuwa, who is often depicted with a human upper body and serpentine lower body. She is credited with creating mankind from yellow clay and then populating the world using a rope dipped in mud to scatter more humans. In the context of Lu’s art, Nuwa stands for the connection between art and creation: “I realized that the creator is a ceramicist, a maker, an artist. As artists, like Nuwa, we are creators — we have the agency and resilience to shape our environment as we want it to be; we can create new worlds.”
The combined effect of Pinkusevich’s and Lu’s art is to experience a temple of feminist consciousness and creation. “Emergence” would be a wonderful setting for other art forms — dance, poetry, performance, music — that could extend and amplify its ideas. It is a visually arresting show that both respects and updates its historical sources.
