Tending Mass

In their two-person exhibition, Tending Mass, artists Angel Oloshove and Debora Cheyenne evoke the transcendental qualities of the world around us - giving form to the intangible and invisible.

Debora Cheyenne creates fantastical botanical dreamscapes that look at the world through an enchanted lens. In their works, vivid verdant tendrils curl into leaves and blooms, and wisps of petals are articulated through thin washes of pigment. Incorporating painting as well as digitally constructed images, Debora Cheyenne explores the interdependence of plant life through the illustration of speculative hyperorganisms and observed botanical structures. Debora Cheyenne draws on the sentient quality of the natural world’s self-maintained order to discuss themes of bonding, support, compassion, and community that extend beyond the Plantae kingdom. Debora Cheyenne’s work asks, What does it mean to live together and how might we create our own structures of support and meaningful connection? How can we come together to function as a collective superorganism?

Spectral gradients of color undulate across the ceramic surface of Oloshove’s biomorphic sculptures to evoke a vaporous weightless quality. As if pulled from thin air, Oloshove’s visually buoyant sculptures appear to both contain and project light from an inner illumination. These humanoid forms feel as if the atmosphere has settled, like condensation from a fog - revealing what has always existed but has only been made visible to the eye by a shared material or forcefield around them. Like Debora Cheyenne, Oloshove’s sculptures echo a primordial genesis that nods to the invisible systems of complex organisms operating in an interconnected network.

In Tending Mass, Oloshove and Debora Cheyenne explore the cultivation of community and togetherness through visionary and chimeric works of art. Together, their works imagine the futurity of humanity with an emphasis on collective connection and care.

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