The Tale Their Terror Tells

Angel Lartigue, Astrid Terrazas, Chris Dorland, Chris Hood, Dan Herschlein, Danny Moynihan, Erin Jane Nelson, Farley Aguilar, Felipe Baeza, Hings Lim, Jessica Taylor Bellamy, Josh Kline, Karl Haendel, Kathy Ruttenberg, Kiyan Williams, Lila de Magalhaes, Marlene McCarty, Max Hooper Schneider, Miljohn Ruperto, Mira Schor, Sarah Jérôme, Xie Lei, Zoe Leonard

Curated by Geena Brown & Lauren Guilford

"Hear the loud alarum bells Brazen bells What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, … Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair How they clang, and clash, and roar What a horror they outpour … How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet, the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells Of the bells Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells"

—Edgar Allen Poe, The Bells

Lyles & King is pleased to present The Tale Their Terror Tells, a group exhibition that considers the intersection of ecology and horror in contemporary art. The artists included in this exhibition operate within the grotesque and monstrous, to address the horrifying realities of our world in peril. Guided by the strange, these artists expose the limits and boundaries of our perception and question what it means to be human.

Collective anxiety festers as our self-inflicted apocalypse closes in and disaster takes hold, inflicting destruction that is grossly disproportionate. Yet, we remain paralyzed, trapped in a death cage of our own making. The environmental crisis is no longer looming overhead, it is no longer an abstraction—an unsettling shadow we choose to ignore or hide from—it’s here, screaming. We have spoiled our earthly home that we continue to regard as expendable, unable to accept responsibility for our irreversible damage. Narratives of “modern progress” tell a lethal and self-serving narrative that furthers the divide between humans, nature and culture. And now, she is rebelling against us, crying out for collaboration and cooperation. As Ursula Le Guin states, “The trouble is, we've all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story. It’s unfamiliar, it doesn't come easily, thoughtlessly to the lips as the killer story does.” Artists working in the genre we are calling “eco-horror” interrogate the myths and monsters that shape our world, exposing the peripheries of human perception to reveal the vibrant interconnections embedded in everyday life.