Bushra Gill
UNSEEN ORDER
A solo show at Wall Box Gallery
2 Tower Place, South San Francisco
October 5 - December 1, 2024
In this exhibition of new work from the past year, much of it from printmaking residencies at Pilchuck Glass School and Kala Art Institute, I began with tree imagery, comparing the changing light of day with seasons of life, which turned into an exploration of invisible structures linking the trees with life itself. As the world’s events became bleaker, black made an unexpected appearance, slowly at first, then grew to fill the richly embossed surfaces of my prints in wide swaths. Spring brought banks of poppies shoving their way in along the edges of parking lots and roads, and their orange insistence was a reminder to me of a larger system. A chance glimpse of morning glories racing over chain link fences and rusting car skeletons gave me another gift of unexpected beauty and reaffirmed my awareness of an unseen order.
I am interested in how we sense and connect to that unseen order by suggesting a visible possibility. The tiny shapes combine to make a pattern but each one can shift the whole image. The repetition of shapes on the surface creates a rhythm that moves our eyes across the image, and the breaks in the pattern point to our imperfections. Through this process, I found that those imperfections became the most interesting aspect and actively followed the patterns as they began to morph and move, not held to the flatness of paper.
