Plane Space is delighted to present an installation by Portland, Oregon-based artist Emily Counts. As the gallery’s sixth annual summer artist-in-residence, Counts will make her New York debut with Pyroclastic Devotion, her resulting installation from her months spent here at the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from September 4 through October 5 with an opening reception on Thursday, September 4th, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Rooted in memories from the artist’s childhood and her exploration of instability and transformation, the focal point of the installation – a large erupting volcano – is based on a playhouse that the artist’s mother built for her at age 4. Suggesting both the power of memory and its fleetingness, the volcano is depicted mid-eruption. Fragments suspended from the ceiling suggest mountain rock exploding from the peak while painted and sculpted lava is captured mid-surge and flow. This visual imagery – natural and powerful and at times sexual – come to represent for Counts what exists within each of us. The psychological and emotional energies that percolate under the surface can at any moment, triggered by a memory or a visual cue, come spewing out. Adding to the personal psychological charge of the installation is the series of ceramic heads embedded into the sides of the volcano. All self-portraits, the faces’ expressions range, showing the multiplicity of self.

A native of the Northwest, Emily Counts was born and raised in Seattle, WA. She received her B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. Since completing school, Counts has shown extensively in Chicago, Portland, OR and California. This show marks her second residency-culminating exhibition, the first coming in 2004 at Los Angeles’s RAID Projects.