LAURYN WELCH
Circadian Rhythms
Artist Reception: April 6th, 6-8 PM
April 6th - May 6th, 2023
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“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
Half Gallery is pleased to present Circadian Rhythms, Lauryn Welch’s first solo show in New York, opening on April 6th and running through May 6th. The exhibition runs concurrently with the artist’s thesis presentation at Hunter College, from April 20th – May 2nd.
Each painting is a portrait of the mundane, the everyday - playing chess, a cat lounging - collaged together through the layering of various people, objects and spaces and brought to life through the application of shapes and color. Seen together, the work (along with the artist’s thesis presentation) creates a parallel universe, neither better nor worse, only heightened… an intensity that lingers.
The subjects of the work are left intentionally anonymous – most of the faces are blurred or absent altogether. Yet if you look slowly you’ll catch fevers and mirrors, and a coterie of animals who bring security through their repeated presence. In Welch’s interior spaces, amid instability, it is what is known that brings the most reassurance, a sense of comfort.
The work is diaristic, and therefore private, and it is that desire for privacy that makes the work so relatable. As the paintings develop, the relationships within them develop, insisting on a sense of balance, however momentary. The specifics of Welch’s world aren’t visible, yet it is the implicit intimacy between people, objects and spaces in the paintings that reflect our own realities.
All the paintings, seen individually or collectively, represent our multiple truths happening simultaneously. In Grounding, for instance, we see electrical cords plugged into a power strip, ensuring safety, yet the cords are a collection of jumbled knots and twists, set against a backdrop of clashing patterns and vibrant colors.
As children, being grounded is a punishment; as adults being grounded is a desirable quality. In an unstable body, being grounded is simply a reality. Eclipse and Bad Moon are two distinct experiences of the same moment, a “window”, from two disparate views, a shared experience from two bodies (selves), a recurring theme in the work.
Yet, the work remains full of joy. The repeated confusion and chaos insisted upon by life is ordered because Welch gets out of her own way, cedes control, and lets the paint do its job: to make sense out of it all.
Lauryn Welch (b. 1991, Hanover, New Hampshire) is a Brooklyn based artist and a longtime resident of the New Hampshire Monadnock Region. She is an MFA candidate in Studio Art at Hunter College. Through painting and film, she explores the language of care and the experiences of illness and wellness through the construction of home. Her work is influenced by locally accessible nature and ornithology. Lauryn has screened at HotDocs and BAMcinemafest, and shown previously with Half Gallery in Stiltsville, Miami, FL.