Zoe McGuire

Another Place is pleased to present Sacred Ecologies, a solo exhibition of paintings by Zoe McGuire. This is McGuire’s first show with the gallery.

Encyclopedias of natural history don’t show the full picture. A latin name, tethered to a drawing or photograph of a plant or animal is depicted in insolation, cordoned off by chapter, by page. Pine trees may be in a separate volume from the Karner Blue Butterfly, and yet the two are dependent on one another. Flowers are connected to honeybees, to stone fruits, to birds, and so on. Ecology invites one to question whether these species are truly separate—an inquiry which has taken on dire immediacy as a host of pollinating species have become endangered.

In a series of paintings Zoe McGuire explores specific relationships between pollinators and their dependent species. Unlike a naturalist of the 19th century, McGuire paints the relationship between species themselves. Between the Monarch butterfly and the milkweed she unfurls an ecstatic visual language, imbued with organic symmetry and vivid patterns. A flower’s delicate vessel is refracted; rivulets pulse between a mountain range. Each work takes its cues from a specific relationship and moves to the broader, rorschach-like manifestations which attract the viewer, drawing them into the essence of ecological belonging.

Divisions between artist and designer, between human and non-human become muddled; the butterflies' painted wings becomes the curvature of a tree branch, the movement of a brush, a saturated color field. All is part of a larger order, that of the rhizome. Oil painting, McGuire reminds us, is also ecological. Nothing is ever truly separate—and yet to see the interconnected world requires faith and constant practice. In these paintings McGuire presents space for us to return to this vital effort.

Zoe McGuire (b. 1996) grew up in Upstate New York and is currently studying for an MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has upcoming shows with Marinaro Gallery in New York City, Taymour Grahne Projects in London, and Louis Buhl Gallery in Detroit, among others.