curated by Marilla Palmer

Victoria Calabro Nancy Evans Jacob Goble Mary Jones Yuliya Lanina Shelley Marlow Marilla Palmer Patrick Van Maanen Sam Wilson

“people of delicate sensibility exhausted by mental stimulation above all else”...”certain taste for things supernatural”...”spurious chastity and hypocritical modesty”...”penchant for artificiality and love of eccentricity”....”Nature has had her day; she has finally and utterly exhausted the patience of sensitive observers by the revolting uniformity of her landscapes and skyscapes” ...”no cascade that cannot be imitated to perfection by hydraulic engineering”....”complex contours devised by some demented draughtsman”......”diaphanous bladder of a pig”...”mad rites of magical ceremonies”.....”delicious sorcery”......”delicious reverie”...”luxury will turn the boy to a murderer”...”excessively fond of flowers”.....”inborn taste for the artificial…neglect real for the copy fashioned by the hands of the true artist”....”factitious skin covered with a network of counterfeit veins”...”vegetable ghouls and carnivorous plants”...”refreshing note of liquid green and pale gold”...”this floral extravaganza was quivering”...”beneath a firmament no longer lit by the beacon-fires of ancient hope!”

Excerpted from the “Against Nature” by Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884

This exhibition was inspired by Fontenay, the residence of the fictional character Des Esseintes in the 1884 book “Against Nature” written by Joris Karl Huysmans . All of the artists are unrepresented.