Lauren Murao Walkiewicz’s debut solo show at the NARS Foundation in Sunset Park invites viewers within the subaquatic terrarium of pupating creatures yet unseen, dancing and dying before their eyes. Writhing entities are held firmly to the wall with invasive and insistent chrome fasteners after what could only have been a violent removal from their natural habitats. We are confronted with infant insects trapped by screens of fluorescent flames, branded like animals in the wild meant to be collected later – tagged with rings more at home in a BDSM sex club than in the halls of conservation worship. Meanwhile, an undulating fountain of unnatural eldrich origin sings a wet chorus of man’s authoritative presence within the gallery and our planet. With her exhibition, Murao Walkiewicz dredges up concerns about man‘s control over the earth and his biblically ordained dominion over the remaining living souls.
Aqueous Amalgams is comprised of three distinct research areas braided together throughout the exhibition. Pieces like Lissodendoryx Cirrus are built of thin layers of wood, metal, and clay that remain pressed firmly against the wall as if under the lens of our psychic microscope. Forms reach up with poisonous neo-pincers either in a daring ecstatic dance or limp as ribbons as they fall to the bottom of the ocean. Largely the pale blue and sickly green of coral bleaching, the edges of Lissodendoryx Cirrus are laced with deadly scarlet-red barbs. As we consider them, unblinking silver bolts stare out like flatworm eyes whose intent cannot be ascertained. They’re so like and unlike us. All of these forms are. Like butterflies pinned to a cork board, viewers may want to approach these beings, spines bent like ours, arms linked together in desperate solidarity like ours, but their delicate proximity to death can unnerve the sensitive and alarm the paranoid.
The Hortus Maris Incendii series of Aqueous Amalgams pushes this anxiety onto our senses with chrome crustaceous pupas claws that seem to probe the burning edges of their embryonic world. Long, thick bolts force the claws together as the specimen struggles to push back against its captor. Murao Walkiewicz extends the active atmosphere of these pieces onto the gallery wall as well, having the back of each piece painted with a fluorescent orange that makes each sculpture pulsate with heat. To the viewer, the acrylic barrier holding back this divine heat bubbles and cracks, alluding to the limitations of our control. Despite it all, they are alive beneath our oppressive white-washed veil.
At the gallery center, ominously sharing space with the viewer as they explore the terrarium, is a squirming open maw, Matrix Maris. Its glossy tendrils end in pink phallic orifices reminiscent of a cherubic fountain or a Lovecraftian god reaching out to breathe life into Adam. I sense that if left alone, one might be called to climb into its grasp and sigh her body into its shokushu zeme embrace. The water running through Matrix Maris is an unnatural blue, just off-color enough to dissuade the rouge off-collar intruder, and all of the work in Aqueous Amalgams generates a similar level of uneasy respect.
Viewers are drawn to the terrarium for its beauty and the opportunity to peer into the otherworld. However, one senses that the inhabitants of Aqueous Amalgams have been biding their time, investigating weak points, and waiting for the right moment to strike.
