Mud-Luscious and Palette-Wonderful
The four seasons have always held artists in their sway — Alfons Mucha, the founding father of Art Nouveau, and Italian Mannerist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who created weird and fantastic figures out of fish and tree roots come to mind immediately. But the unique transition from summer’s abundance to autumn’s tremulous decay, when whiffs of petrichor and indole replace the scent of sea salt and tall grass, and light shifts from sparkling blue to hazy shades of gold, is an interlude of particularly rich artistic fodder. “Verdant,” a group exhibition of more than 35 artists put together by Bavaria native Redd Walitzki, offers fecund bulbs dropping into hibernation, bare roots growing out of the bodies of woodland creatures, flower nymphs falling into piles of browning leaves, and the surreal migration of birds drifting across a wallpaper of shifting light. Walitzki’s companion solo show, “Exquisite Corpse,” also opens tonight with a performance by her sister, mezzo-soprano Roxanna Walitzki, who performs new arrangements of Fauré and Debussy art songs which reflect the entropy implicit in the feral canvases.
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