CURATOR'S SELECTION: WINGS

With sights set on a less tumultuous future, the Curator’s Selection for June – August 2023 brings together a selection of images that symbolize freedom, hope and new beginnings. Using the wing, an appendage capable of producing lift and movement, as our guide for the selection, we have gathered images depicting things that fly to illustrate this metaphor.

The smallest of flying creatures in the selection, the butterfly, is used by artists like Cara Barer and Whitney Lewis Smith for the symmetry and patterning of their brightly decorated wings. The openness of their forms lends a sense of life to their compositions and alludes to the climactic final stage of metamorphosis – when the insect becomes its most mature and beautiful.

The sense of freedom that birds represent in their ability to fly long distances, traversing land and water at great heights, inspires Michelle Nguyen’s and Ted Fullerton’s works. Whether open-winged and enjoying the pleasures of an over-the-top birdbath, as seen in Nguyen’s “Luxury Birdbath”, or invoking the mythology of divine birds like the phoenix, a reoccurring symbol in Fullerton’s paintings, these winged creatures express boundless optimism in their unconstrained movements.

Lastly, it is those large, metal birds in the sky, aircrafts, as captured by Jeffrey Milstein at their moment of take-off, that entice the viewer into dreaming of far-off destinations and new beginnings.