Les Yeux du Monde is pleased to present
Millicent Young: Cantos for the Anthropocene
& Kris Iden: Pelago d’Aria
5 January – 11 February 2018
Opening Reception, Friday, 5 January 5 – 7 p.m.
To open the New Year, Les Yeux du Monde will present Millicent Young: Cantos for the Anthropocene and Kris Iden: Pelago d’Aria, two exhibitions by artists who view art as a lens or means of reflection, meditation, and possible change.
Millicent Young’s haunting installations created with a variety of materials from horse hair to lead, fabric, wood and stone have for many years garnered prestigious awards from jurors from museums such as New York’s Whitney Museum and New Museum, Washington D.C.’s Hirschhorn and Corcoran and the Italian Florence Biennale, to name just a few. From her 1997 MFA project entitled Possibilities for Transforming the Paradigm to her most recent exhibition Cantos for the Anthropocene to be featured in main gallery at Les Yeux du Monde, Young is interested in altering one’s perception and recognition through her art and possibly invoking change. She writes: “The Anthropocene is Now- the first epoch defined by the impact of one species – ours – on the planet and all the systems that have spawned and supported what we have named “life”. The Cantos are my witness and meditations on Now.”
Kris Iden, who completed her MFA in printmaking at VCU also has received many awards and fellowships both here and abroad. For her new work in watercolor, drawing and etching that comprises her show Pelago d’Aria she draws inspiration from Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) and Italian physicist and mathematician Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647). She admires the spare but powerful still life paintings of Morandi and his ability to distill from the ordinary the timeless and extraordinary. The works in this show arise from recent travels abroad to “places of great personal significance,” yet she also distills the scenes “with an unemotional, sober, studied gaze concentrated on space, light, shape and arrangement.” Her show’s title comes from Torricelli’s poetic line Noi viviamo sommersi nel fondo d’un pelago d’aria. We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air.