AFP Galleries presents Psyche’s Reason, a solo exhibition by Liz Insogna. Much of Insogna’s motivation for Psyche’s Reason stems from texts referencing the afterlife in Greek antiquity. In these texts, two bodies of water are said to exist, one named Lethe, and the other The Pool of Memory.

Lethe is the water of forgetting. In drinking this, the soul is essentially a slate wiped clean of anything from the past—with no memory and clear. Drinking from her waters are groups of attractive strangers, Tall tees, which in some versions of myth are said to be white poplar, surround the water. Upon closer look, black diamond shapes may be found branded onto their trunks. One is desirous to drink from Lethe, and start anew.

In select and extremely rare graves, coins were found in the mouths of the dead, and in certain cases scrolls are found nearby with directions in the afterlife to obtain admittance to the Pool of Memory. One must resist the pool of Lethe, coerce the guards that watch nearby day and night, and follow the right path through to the Pool of Memory. In this pool one is able to attain a new kind of awareness that includes all memory, and thus continues one’s journey awake. If life is a dream it now becomes a lucid one, and if struggles are repeated one is better prepared.

In more widely read Greek mythology, Psyche’s struggle against disaster and her incredible, enormous and quite dangerous troubles of fate parallel the “psyche” in its larger psychological role, that of the soul in the feminine aspect; the mind, the breath, this life. This is the substance that works as “I” in its multi-dimensions, as well as being in dialogue with the winds that move fate. In a Jungian sense this is deeply driven by Anima, the part of the psyche directed within, closely related to the layers beneath consciousness. Mythology’s Psyche was inducted into immortality even after making the most terrible of mistakes.

The works in this exhibition draw on various aspects of this mythology and Insogna’s own personal interpretations The characters in these works are composed of friend’s of the artist, as well as fictitious strangers. Many of the costumes depicted are directly or indirectly inspired by the work of the late fashion visionary Alexander McQueen. Liz Insogna’s poignant paintings and drawings serve as allegorical entries and metaphoric mirrors to ones own mythologies and psyche.