ooze out and away, onehow

Group Exhibition curated by Lauren Wood

Ooze out and away, onehow, is a group exhibition memorializing emotion, sublimation, and the healing properties of artistic expression. The title (a musical track by Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd, off of their 1986 studio album, The Moon and the Melodies), evokes a sense of letting go, and of passing through, while also calling to mind the fluids of the body that act as our natural defense against infection. After two tumultuous, emotional, and absolutely unprecedented years spent in forced isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which as of April 2022 I acknowledge still persists, I wanted to create a space for the visceral, the universal, and the sacred. It is crucial now more than ever to promote feelings of connectedness, of empathy, and of compassion. I hope that this exhibition can exist as a meditative space for viewers to enjoy, process, relate, and perhaps for a moment even let go of longstanding emotions and existential anxieties.

Alain de Botton and John Armstrong's text, Art as Therapy, advocates not art therapy in the clinical sense, but rather art as a therapeutic medium. de Botton and Armstrong argue that art compensates for psychological frailties, and that among other things, art can console its viewers. They explain, "to discover the purpose of art, we must ask what kind of things we need to do with our minds and emotions, but have trouble with." Remembering, Hope, Sorrow, Rebalancing, Self-Understanding, Growth, and Appreciation are the seven frailties, or functions, the writers discuss. de Botton and Armstrong furthermore remind us that when we are aware of life's troubles, we are better able to appreciate beauty, and that art can transform suffering into beauty, and even help us suffer better.

Ooze out and away, onehow, makes space for the existential and the emotional. Art can exist as a monument to feeling and experience. Where does grief go? Or rather, what do emotions do? I argue for the importance of connecting the canon of art to our inner needs, to venerate the personal as universal, and to make time and space for healing.

Lauren Wood (b. 1990, Columbia, MO) is a Los Angeles based curator and art dealer focused on increasing the visibility of marginalized, overlooked, and emerging artists. Outside of fine art, her interests reside in mental wellness advocacy and social justice reform. She is currently completing a Master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling, with an interest in preventative mental health care for at-risk populations and empowerment and assertiveness work with female identifying individuals.

The exhibition will feature work by Darcy Bartoletti, Brice Bischoff, Amiee Byrne, Shirley Glass, Olive Kimoto, Sarah Lewiecki, Karen Lofgren, Andres Payan Estrada, Megan Reed, Adee Roberson, & Chanel Von Habsburg-Lothringen. "ooze out and away, onehow" will also be on view from Sunday, April 3rd thru Sunday, May 15th.

Both shows will be open every Sunday, from April 3rd thru May 15th (12-5PM) & by appointment.