Cosmologies
Daria Dorosh

GALLERY I

September 10 — October 10, 2021

Opening Reception: Friday, September 10, 12-6 PM (by appointment)

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Cosmologies, an exhibition of sculpture, digital prints, and art for the body by A.I.R. co-founder Daria Dorosh. Her 25th solo exhibition is presented as a conversation across three scales: Human, Planet, and Cosmos. Through these registers, Dorosh reflects on subjects as varied as selfie narcissism, digital connection, and looming ecological disaster. Textile, one of the oldest human technologies, links these three bodies of work, continuing Dorosh’s two-decade long investigation of art’s place and intent. Cosmologies sees Dorosh incorporating analog techniques with digital processes, ultimately suggesting that the survival of our species lies somewhere in between.

The exhibition opens on the scale of the Human with works that explore pandemic-driven isolation and the possibility of connection offered by video conferencing technologies. Two works, Zoom Selfie #1 and #2, consider our increasingly technologically mediated lives and the ways in which our devices have magnified our obsession with the self. Ashes and Diamonds, a series of braided neckwear pieces, commemorates the events of the previous year by honoring human perseverance and self-compassion through craft and touch.

Planet draws the viewer’s attention to the state of our ecosystem and its life-giving resources. Six digital prints present manipulated views of the Delaware River near Dorosh’s studio juxtaposed with cognitive maps of ecological information culled from the Internet. Taking on the role of “search engine scientist,” Dorosh outfits her digital compositions with handwritten notes detailing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the altitude of coastal megacities. Six sculptural wall works combine natural forms and materials with various woven fabrics. These assemblages evoke our cultural evolution with textiles and their countless functions and associations across history—as armor, adornment, comfort, ritual dress, and historical artifact.

In Cosmos, Dorosh offers a kaleidoscopic vision of the merging of the digital and analog, human and natural. In a series of digital prints, titled Terrestrial Stars, appear brilliant fractal patterns produced by digitally manipulating photographs of natural forms and textures. These patterns recall those that make up our universe on infinite scales, from cellular structures and forest roots to stars and galaxies. Fully collapsing the historical tension within the visual arts between abstraction and representation, Dorosh’s works point toward a new reality that is hybrid, collaborative, and constellating.

During the exhibition, Cosmologies will host artists@Home, a portfolio of works by A.I.R. artists responding to the impact of ecological exploitation on our home environment. Featured in the gallery’s lobby, the portfolio is part of Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, an international public awareness project initiated by the Codex Foundation and described at extractionart.org.

Daria Dorosh lives in New York City and upstate New York where she and artist John Tomlinson have their studios. She participates in cross-disciplinary networks and projects such as Scalability and BATURU. She continues to research with her PhD community, SMARTlab, in Dublin. Her work is in the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney, and the Special collections archive at the Fashion Institute of Technology as well as private collections. Fashion Lab in Process, LLC, is her research platform to identify new economic models for artists, designers, and creative content creators.

View the Press Release here.
View Daria Dorosh’s page here.

Press

Cassie Packard, “Your Concise New York Art Guide for October 2021”, Hyperallergic, 2021.

Photography: Matthew Sherman