P·P·O·W Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of the Dutch artist, Melanie Bonajo. As Thrown Down from Heaven, is a photo series that focuses on a theme that Bonajo continually explores; the relationships that human beings have with the environment, both private and public, and the desire to create harmony within this. The images in this series combine seemingly opposing elements, nude figures with disposable objects, but when combined these figures become a fusion of the individual and the material, becoming a hybrid that expresses our modern age.

This series comes from elementary questions: what do we need to add to ourselves until we become complete, happy, satisfied or safe? Bonajo believes that our identification with material obsession blocks the ability for a deeper sensibility; this includes not only objects but also immaterial elements such as facts, information, data, and visual input. This fixation inevitably burdens the health of our spirit.

These photographs are Bonajo’s exercises in confronting the impositions placed on material possession and the self. Through the photographs she is trying to sculpt a mental life, creating a space where silence can exist between us and objects. This space connects the logical with the intuitive, and allows us to retain a balance of our perceptions. Bonajo states, “We live in the human era…We are the architects of the human universe…We think that being able to reflect by reason sets us apart or above nature. But being a symptom of the earth, human beings are therefore bounded to the laws of Nature…Our psychic landscape is a reflection of our inside and shapes our external surroundings. This evidence in matter is a consequence of our thought system and a symbolic expression of our time.”

There will be an exhibition catalog available, produced by Kodoji Press, Switzerland