Coleman Burke Gallery is pleased to present Emergence, a solo exhibition of new drawings by artist Carol Prusa. The exhibition will be on view from September 16th through October 16th. The gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, from 10am – 6pm. We cordially invite you to our opening reception held on Thursday, September 16th, 6 – 8pm.

Carol Prusa is interested in the mechanics of understanding: how it is we are able to make sense of anything in a hugely complex and constantly changing world.

Emergence expresses the novel and unanticipated complexity of structures emerging from a multiplicity of simple interactions. While existence can seem impossible to decipher, Prusa’s work is reminiscent of concepts which can describe patterns found in nature, such as the golden ratio or fractal geometry. Similar to these co-operant forces, Prusa’s extraordinarily beautiful and coherent whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Here a universe of newly created worlds impregnate the space and entangle us in the immeasurable gap between consciousness and the material world.

Working meticulously in silverpoint to initiate the work, Prusa blurs the determined underdrawing into dissolution with a graphite wash, erasing previous conditions and thus opening up a new liminal location of pure possibility. This allows Prusa to intuit novel structures and relationships, birthing an articulate, alternate world out of the ashes of the former. Meditating on the distended and undifferentiated hemisphere, new forms coalesce as Prusa carefully resolves them by heightening with white acrylic binder. Hundreds of hours are spent sensing out the emergent patterns, resulting in a kaleidoscopic onslaught that appears to crystallize from an epicenter. The new landscape brings to mind the human need to construct meaningful order in a world filled with too much information.

Expressing flux and shifting scales within the geometry of the orb, other technological adjuncts such as light and video reside within the core. An orchestrated pattern of flickering lights play on the surface from miniscule pores drilled through the dome, each fiber optic cable connected to a programmed sequence of light-emitting diodes. Videos play on iPods inside the dome, viewed through optics opening up the vault.

Confronting Prusa’s work in the dark, the added dimension of bio-luminescent punctuation leaves the viewer unmoored in space, caught between an experiential collision of reality and divine imagination. It is in this transient moment on the path to understanding that we are cognizant of our diminutive place in the world. We are merely “shining our flashlights in the darkness,” trying to decipher the quiet mechanisms of a larger power, and are given a framework to do so through the numinous reductionism of Prusa’s works.