Hideouts, Escape Hatches and a Submarine
Hideouts, Escape Hatches and a Submarine
March, 2022
Mercury 20 Gallery, Oakland
Death in life, human/nature, entanglements, facts and frictions are the stream of consciousness that produced this work. In the last weeks of my father’s life he hovered in between states of sharply conscious and revelatory subconscious. How many hideouts do you have? Where are the escape hatches? One afternoon he drifted up out of sleep on a submarine.
These paintings and drawings are portals or escape hatches into the cosmopolitan Terrestrial. Mychorrhizal networks, interspecies transmissions, mathematically precise patterns and mutualism inspire this work. Algorithmic plant patterns float in abstracted compositions. Landscapes mix plants out of season and geographic location. Acacia thorns provide protection. Fire, water and air compose a split screen. Plants, fungi and lichen perform the metabolic songs of networks through wired telephones, old cans, and vintage microphones. Large drawings of phytomorphs or people in plant forms suggest a fabulist future. These works surround a submarine along the center of the floor, a whale from the human subconscious forming a rubble pile of archeological tile forms, art objects, passenger dolls and periscopes that survey the vista through mammalian senses. A current of sound runs through the Submarine of war, of work, of stealth, of humor, submerged, sub-colonial, subliminal, sublime, surging, streaming, sinking and surfacing from our dark waters.
Surfacing Sound: Performance on March 13 by Chris Brown and Laetitia Sonami
https://vimeo.com/692836556
Review in Daily Californian
https://www.dailycal.org/2022/02/23/listening-to-lichen-johanna-poethigs-hideouts-escape-hatches-and-a-submarine-unites-biology-technology/
Majenta Portal, 96″ x 96″, acrylic on canvas
Escape Hatch Algorithm, 10’x 10′, acrylic on canvas
Earth Station Garden, 84″ x 84″, acrylic on canvas
Gallery view
Succulent Dance, 108″ x 60″, graphite, acrylic, wire on non woven media
Gallery view
Submarine 35’x 5’x5′, multi media
Submarine ceramics, dimensions variable
Periscope Golden Tongue_mixed media
Submarine ceramics, dimensions variable
Submarine 35’x5’x5′, multi media
Periscope Pink Tongue_mixed media
Acacia Thorns, 30″ x 40″, acrylic on canvas
Escape Hatch, 40″ x 40″, acrylic on wood
Copper Earth Station, 40″ x 40″, acrylic on wood
Sunflower Portal, 40″ x 30″, acrylic on wood
Gallery view
Enlichening, 12″ x 12″, acrylic on wood
All Flesh is Grass, 12″ x 12″, acrylic on wood
Extremophile, 12″ x 12″, acrylic on wood
Symbiosis, 12″ x 12″, acrylic on wood
Metabolic Song, 10″ x 10″, acrylic on wood
Cosmopolitan Bodies, 12″x12″. acrylic on wood
Radiotrophic, 10″ x 10″, acrylic on wood
Spores on Air, 12″ x 12″, acrylic on wood
White Rot Fungi Electric, 12″ x 12″, acrylic on wood
Signaling 10″ x 10″, acrylic on wood
Magnolia Smoke, 42″ x 52″, acrylic on canvas
Tillandsia, 24″ x 36″, oil on wood
Fire Esapes Water, 54″ x 84″, acrylic on canvas
Landline, 12″ x 42″, acrylic and oil on wood
Acacia, 144″x 60″, graphite, arcylic and wire on non woven media
Quinacridone Succulent, 60″ x 36″, graphite, acrylic and wire on non woven media
Passiflora, 84″ x 60″, graphite, acrylic, wire on non-woven media
Body Language, 66′ x 60′, graphite, acrylic and wire on non woven media
Cocos Arecaceae, 109″ x 54″, graphite, acrylic, wire on non woven media
Sampaguita and Jasmine, 108″ x 48″, graphite on paper
Voyria Dark Web, 12″ x 12″, archival print
Terraqueous, 12″ x 12″, archival print