“I began mulling on the idea of Passing Through after discovering a piece of garden sculpture with a hole drilled through it. I fixated on the idea of having one thing in front of me and something else peeking out from the other side, beyond my reach. We knew we were only passing through paradise on Kauai, which served as a reminder that we would continue to pass through and emerge from the pandemic as well.”
– Karen Hochman Brown
In Passing Through, Karen Hochman Brown uses her digital photographs of nature as springboards to fantastical landscapes full of magnified focus, distortion and symmetry. In addition to digital prints, the show includes mixed media works and animations.
The works are the result of a winter spent on the island of Kauai during the pandemic. The longer the pandemic wore on, the more normal planes of reality twisted and up-ended themselves. The show consists of several surreal seascapes accented by floral elements. The surreal scenes pay homage to Dali and Magritte. The inclusion of small lightbox mixed-media pieces are a direct extension of the “In The Bubble” series she produced last year and are directly inspired by Mary Corse: A Survey in Light.