Stux Gallery is pleased to present Burning Bright: Tiger, tiger, an exhibition that explores the various functions and incarnations of fire in visual art. Working from a range of media and inspirations, the show’s sixteen artists present vividly imagined works that are acutely conscious of the politics of material reality and the continuity of art and human history. Fireʼs amphibious capacity to both transform physical material and participate in the artʼs abstract content is thoroughly discussed.
Fire is perhaps the most dynamic and elusive of the four elements in classical thought. Although immaterial, fire curiously embodies a bright, defined presence, and its vaporizing power grants it a peculiarly intimate relationship with tangible matter. It sustains light and warmth, but can also sponsor demolition and ashen death from which hope (or further despair) could arise.
Fire's capacity to be both simplifying and sublimating is fluently, metaphorically articulated by a number of participating artists, by the production of visual art, where the flame is frequently employed as subject, medium and vehicle for alchemy. Sokari Douglas Camp, Kathy Ruttenberg, Dana Melamed, and Michael Zansky literally domesticate fire's destructive ability to delicately tweak steel, wood or paper, and solidify wet earth, while Rúrí's Burning Rainbow depicts a mesmerizing, near-tangible impossibility. In addition, the show will include a video of “the father” of fire in art, an Yves Klein dynamic performance that directly enlists both fire and the raw human body for the creation of art.