CHALK HORSE is thrilled to present Claudia Greathead’s new exhibition, Insect Assembly. The works will be on view at the gallery from September 19th until October 19th.
Insect Assembly is a series of new paintings which reflects on the intersections between the human and insect world. The paintings as a whole momentarily uncover the abundant worlds and systems of insects that are always flourishing around us, yet often go unnoticed. Strung together, the works form an ecosystem of their own, where each ‘species’ both exists within a web of interrelationships, and negotiates a particular agency of its own. Each painting brings into focus the robustness and textures of the insects – their intricate qualities are endowed with a dispersive mode of attention, and a speculativeness which always seem to persist within Greathead’s imagery.
In ‘Emperor moth’, the wings of the insect almost morph into an underwater impression. Fluttering against the moss green undercurrents, one cannot help but imagine if this moth had been present within the textures of Greathead’s earlier works – at the bottom of a swimming pool, or reflected by the moon as it lingers on the side of a tennis court.
Seen together, Greathead’s paintings generate the skin of a distinct ‘assembly’, one that intimately signifies what Gilles Deleuze identified as “the genesis of an unknown body.” And yet, this ‘unknown body’ speaks. It does not linger within an invisible, anthropocentric field, but protrudes out of the simultaneously overwhelming precarity and active vitality of its livelihood.
Thu Tran, 2024