Amy Pleasant
FragmenT FOLD b l o o m
November 10, 2023 – January 13, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, November 10, 6:00 - 8:30 pm
Laney Contemporary is pleased to welcome Birmingham-based artist Amy Pleasant back to Savannah with her second solo exhibition at the gallery entitled FragmenT FOLD bloom. This selection of work is physical; it fragments and folds and allows the body to bloom into what feels like an ancient alphabet of gestures. The work ranges in material expression and engages the whole and the fragmented form in solitude or in serene connection. Through a variety of shapes, Pleasant’s figures embody gestures and silhouettes of stillness or dynamic interplay. Some fold into themselves while others duplicate into a twin. Still others “bloom” outward into X shapes embracing as much space as they can claim.
Throughout Pleasant’s practice, bodies are distilled into shapes that perceptually shift between foreground and background, positive and negative spaces. The body merges with the letter X in Pleasant’s visual vocabulary as both affirmation and negation, holding place as the “I am here” gesture. They are figurative shapes with both qualities, expressing the full capacity of human form and the incredible potential of the body. But X is just one expression as Pleasant’s work explores its own language of shape and gesture, curve, and corner. It undertakes a kind of poetic alphabet of the body in a visual form. It appears these forms have always existed, as if hieroglyphic and timeless.
The exhibition encompasses many facets: painted ceramic sculptures, works on paper in ink and gouache, and oil paintings in a variety of sizes. Color plays an important, though subtle, role in Pleasant’s figures. Shades of color are in conversation with one another, so soft and nuanced they could be missed. Colors and shapes establish patterns providing a playful commentary on human emotions - visualizing how it feels to “run in circles.” These repetitive forms are at times illusions of space and movement, establishing bold contrasts and emotive connections.
Amy Pleasant’s work induces the body to feel something: a stirring, a slouching, a bending, a leaning toward or leaning away. Her work explores the subtleties of the human gesture indirectly asking questions such as: What is universal about a body? Can we move closer to seeing ourselves in one another, folding, fragmenting, and blooming toward bodies and spaces of empathy? Her compositions encourage awareness of our own “micro-movements with meaning,” nudging us to lean in with more curiosity and elegance, and perhaps, even with grace.
