Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Mariah Green, Vanessa Perez Winder, Jas Keimig, and Sam Wrigglesworth pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Brian Sanchez: Being
Winston Wachter, Seattle, WA
January 10 to February 24, 2024
Looking at a Brian Sanchez painting is akin to looking into a portal. Not one to a dark, unfeeling universe, but one that’s full of vibrant color and emotion. Sanchez’s latest show at Winston Wachter, Being, further proves the artist’s ability to evoke a strong response with his color-field paintings. Even the posters advertising the exhibition around town have a delicious, magnetic pull, standing out amongst the show flyers and stickers that pepper the cityscape.
Sanchez’s paintings in this show are an emotive clash of color and line—maroon keeling into dark navy, neon orange snuggled next to deep teal, light blue laying on top of sage green. While there are hints of nature throughout his work, I see them more as mirrors of whatever emotional or cognitive state you’re in. I urge you to go and stand in front of one of his paintings and just drink it all in—the color, the matte texture, the way the lines interrupt and flow into each other. What do you see? What do you feel? Where does it take you? The title of the show is also an invitation to simply be with the paintings in the room and with yourself.
Reflection: What color brings out the most emotion in you?
Ardent Mystic: Morris Graves, Mariah Robertson, Letha Wilson
studio e, Seattle, WA
January 6 to February 24, 2024
The New Year marked the beginning of Heroes Gallery’s new curatorial residency at studio e in Georgetown. The formerly-of-NYC gallery will pair the works of contemporary artists with their historical influences to draw connections between the past and the present. The first group exhibition in this series, Ardent Mystic, features an eclectic–and interconnected–group of artists: photographer Mariah Robertson, mixed-media artist Letha Wilson, and the late modernist painter Morris Graves.
While all traverse in different mediums, their work has a through-line of ecstatic, mystical reflections of the natural world. Robertson’s rebellious photochemical treatments bubble into one another, creating a colorful galaxy all their own. Wilson’s sculptural landscape photographs bend and fold back onto themselves, forcing the viewer to reconsider how we see the environments we live in. And Graves–a giant of the Northwest School–has two tremendous waterfall paintings featured in the show that capture the sublime nature of water cascading down a craggy cliff. In Ardent Mystic, Robertson, Wilson, and Graves speak both to each other and all at once.
Reflection: Whose work is the most evident in your own? What is the lineage of your love and/or practice of art?