September 5th, 2014 – October 5th, 2014
Opening Reception, Friday, September 5th, 7pm-9pm

Curated by Jason Patrick Voegele and Keith Schweitzer

The sky is falling- or so it would appear in Kent Henricksen’s upcoming exhibition, Disharmony in Blue and Gold, at The Lodge Gallery.

Known for creating fraught environments that are both inviting and menacing, Henricksen’s work is the combination of opposing forces- the past and present, horror and absurdity, the comic and the tragic, high and low culture. The exhibition presents an immersive installation within midnight blue gallery walls glimmering with thousands of hand stenciled gold dots reminiscent of a mythic celestial heaven. Dark blue canvases hang directly on the stenciled walls where images of discord prevail. Throughout the gallery stoneware face jugs are ominously impaled upon golden stakes that seemingly thrust upwards from the floor.

Race and gender, power and conflict, these are just some of the transcultural archetypes Henricksen explores by manipulating images that are sourced from biblical illustrations, newspapers, old master prints and esoteric Hindu symbolism of the Trimurti (the creator, the preserver and the destroyer).  The thread and ink of his canvases are imbued with a complex ambiguity that pushes the images beyond any definitive cultural context. Juxtaposing illustrations of historical events with familiar contemporary images, Henricksen’s work invites you to step into a shamanistic world of non-linear narrative and mythic time. Each canvas is a silkscreened fable in gold ink and meticulously hand embroidered thread.

Henricksen explains, “Combining eastern ideas with western images- the large canvases are symbolic labyrinths of the cosmos.  The western images loosely represent the Hindu Trimurti- with a creator, a destroyer and a maintainer.  They are representations of a troubled world with disturbing human behavior- destroying the unknown, protecting or creating the familiar, and maintaining the balance of disturbance”

Also, included in the show is a new body of work based on sacred geometric patterns. Here Henricksen evokes the Sri Yantra in gold thread. Formed by nine interlocking triangles that surround and radiate out from the central (bindu) point and balanced against the familiar blue and gold celestial backdrop, we are presented with the symbolic womb of creation. It is the symbol of the universe as a whole and the reconciliation of the divine masculine and feminine principles, a process and philosophy not at all unfamiliar to western culture through illustrations of the chemical wedding in European spiritual alchemy.