Cotyledon, June 2022

From left to right: Nils Benson, Susan Kleinberg, Julio Panisello-Huguet

Cotyledon Projects is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition, Cotyledon, curated by HP Denham.

Featuring Artists:

Órla Bates

Natalie Lerner

Evan Mendel

Sasha Fishman

John Dillard

Julio Panisello-Huguet

Nils Benson

Susan Kleinberg

Miles Peyton

_____

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

(Dylan Thomas)

_____

 

Cotyledon, that's the technical term for the lovingly packed lunch inside of a seed. Crack open a lucky one and you may find a tinsy pair of leaves waiting to deploy. The first limbs to creep out of the soil, yawn, stretch and shake off its outer shell, cotyledon is an embryonic leaf that bears little resemblance to its true leaves. Housing enough matter and energy to sustain the intense growth of a seedling, they are a tiny, but mighty affirmation that everything one needs is within.

 

The artworks presented for this exhibition were selected with this framework in mind. As the first green to crop up, seed leaves mark a site in the soil - a place of new growth. They are at once an action, a place, and a limb. In varying strides, each work responds to the spirit and sensibility of cotyledon. It begins as an utterance, buried somewhere in the throat as suggested by Julio Panisello-Huguet’s Neck (Front). It is also a site of richness and possibility, even in the smallest and most unassuming of manners, like Evan Mendel’s works on cardboard. Cotyledon is a foundation: beginning in the seed and breaking through the loam, it is body in formation, akin to Órla Bates’ figure emerging from the terra firma. Those first days when a seedling emerges from the ground, rearing its neck and becoming, they bare the familiarities of our own flesh and remind us that the stuff of flora is not too far off from that of fauna. Together the works in this exhibition encourage the notion that the natural world is our collaborator and furthermore, that no matter the taxonomy, we are all bodies on this Body.

 

Cotyledon Projects

1950 S. Santa Fe ave, unit 202 Los Angeles

Opening Saturday, June 5th, 2022 6-9 pm

June 5th - 11th, 2022

 

Thoughts on Cotyledon, written by Paul Fitzpatrick

Evan Mendel, Orla Bates
Cotyledon, June 2022
Julio Panisello-Huguet, Miles Peyton