Elizabeth Chapin: Treespell

January 27 - March 07,2024

From Women & Their Work: "Women & Their Work presents Treespell, a solo exhibition of multi-sensory works in an immersive installation by artist Elizabeth Chapin. In Treespell, Chapin delves into the natural and mythological realms to comment with dark whimsy on the transformative power of the gaze, and the interconnectedness of all living things. Her work draws on personal, historical, and imaginative elements, which she uses to alternately wield and subvert notions of viewership and voyeurism. Treespell will remain on view from January 27th through March 7th, 2024. Chapin will be in conversation with artist Shahzia Sikander on February 29th at 10 AM CST as part of the gallery’s ongoing TalkAbout series. Treespell is inspired by the Greek goddess Artemis and the myth of Actaeon the hunter. In the myth, Actaeon surreptitiously watched Artemis bathing, a violation for which she transformed him into a stag and shot him through with arrows. Artemis’s swift and vengeful rejection of Actaeon’s gaze resonated with Chapin’s complex relationship with viewing and viewership as a visual artist. Exhausted by constantly observing her work and being observed through her work in turn, the artist aims to turn her attention to the very question of viewership itself. Chapin views Artemis as both a “gaze-destroyer” and as a divine symbol of non-separateness or non-dualism, a belief that humans are inextricably one with the natural world, the spiritual realm, and each other. From this perspective, the gaze itself arises from an illusion of separateness between one who looks and one who is looked upon. At the center of the installation are sculptures of Artemis guarded by two maenads (nymph-like female followers in Greek mythology), all modeled on real muses from the artist’s personal life. Nearby, Stag is a sculpture of a deer with embedded electronic screens for eyes, arrow wounds, and neon-pink entrails spilling out. Chapin is fascinated by the process of transformation from human to beast, and in the hybrid creatures to be found in between. This part of the work considers the process of “othering,” as Chapin attempts to show the being’s gradual dissolution from human to beast. For the stag’s eyes, Chapin painted the eyes of various male figures who have been significant in history, as well as her own life, and laid them over each other in a loop that disintegrates our understanding of who we are seeing and creates an eerie sense that the viewer, too, is being watched. “These in-between spaces become entanglement, simultaneously obliterative and intermingling,” says Chapin. Chapin’s forest of blank, padded tree sculptures serve as screens for a looped stop-motion video of the artist’s painting process. These trees are animated by video projection, only to melt away into blankness again. Chapin evokes the universality of the forest as a mythological setting, where mischievous transformation happens unexpectedly. This looped sculptural projection is a cyclical, regenerative process that destabilizes the act of looking by disrupting the relationship between viewer and subject, as the “painting” itself is not physically present. A commentary on today’s crowded visual culture and the growing sense of separation between humans and nature, Chapin’s work reflects and rejects the ways in which the modern world has turned away from nature and toward a constant influx of digital visual information. “Treespell is an overarching story about this mutual spell that we’re all involved in; we become ‘beasted’ when we become separate from nature,” Chapin asserts. Her colorful paintings of trees, which she approaches with the specific and thoughtful care usually reserved for portraiture, remind us of the value of returning our time, attention, and gaze back toward the natural world. About the Artist Elizabeth Chapin's paintings explore the intimacy of bodies (human, arboreal, and vegetal) as expansive environments – intra-connected, both containing and leaking within each other. This intimacy dissolves the illusion of gaze – of artist/subject and subject/viewer. Chapin sees archetype and myth as a way of holding our seemingly distinct experiences and bodies in the thicker flow of everything. Social media, the religion of identity, and a modern mythology perpetuates and broadcasts “self”, offering playful creativity, but also exile, distorting what it means to be connected, while maintaining systems of separateness. Chapin responds to these ideas with restless paintings that become bodies, tumble off the wall, fold into themselves, into you and into each other, paintings co-becoming. Born in Mississippi, Chapin received her BFA at the University of Virginia and also studied at The Parson School of Design in Paris. Her work has been exhibited across the United States in New York City; Houston, TX; Austin, TX; New Orleans, LA; Nashville, TN; and Jackson, MS, among others. In 2020, she was awarded a residency in Florence, Italy, through Feminist Art Collective Toronto. In 2022, she was offered a 3 year mentorship under the acclaimed artists Shahzia Sikander and Holly Hughes. In 2023, Chapin was invited to participate in the biennial Sculpture Month Houston. About Women & Their Work Women & Their Work fosters the artistic growth of women artists by encouraging them to make new, adventurous work and develops audiences for whom contemporary art is meaningful. Our mission is to ensure that diverse women artists are equitably represented in all forms of art. For 45 years, Women & Their Work has been a cornerstone of the Austin arts community and has actively developed the careers of more than 2,000 women artists, presenting hundreds of visual art exhibitions, music, dance and theater events, film festivals and education programs. Nationally recognized for the quality of its work, Women & Their Work has played an important role in the development of the visual and performing arts in Texas. For additional information, contact Jordan Nelsen, Gallery Director: nelsen@womenandtheirwork.org"

Reception: January 27, 2024 | 7-9 pm

Women & Their Work (Cesar Chavez) 1311 East Cesar Chavez Street
Austin, Texas 78702
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