For her first solo exhibition at Gaga, Guadalajara, Heji Shin has produced a new series of “abstract” photographs. At a first glance, her new images are devoid of any recognizable content, composed of bright splatters, swarms of yellow specks and shooting, luminous streaks, suggesting high tech warfare at night or remote, sci-fi star systems. In fact, these are images of fireflies, photographed in Tlaxcala, Mexico during their spring-summer mating season. Shooting outdoors in dusky fields, Shin’s subject here is bioluminescence, or the sexual life of insects. Her swarming, painterly, all-over compositions capture the coded body language of bugs calling for mates. These are spaces made of signals.
In Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 text “Disappearance of the Fireflies,” the extinction of firefly populations in Italy serves as a metaphor for unanalyzed shifts in political power since WWII, marking the emergence of a new, technocratic post-fascist fascism after 1968. He meant that the disappearance of fireflies due to light pollution and pesticides was an effect of a planetary, consumer-capitalist death drive which otherwise remained unconscious, and unwritten in the press. Bioluminescence, then, as a silent political analysis of these weird new times. The extinguished light of the fireflies signals an end of the world we still don’t see coming. Insect language saying the humanly unthinkable.
The mating rituals of fireflies are like a glow-in-the-dark music, a coded exchange between males and females at day’s end. Their luminous conversation lasts for a brief ten minutes following sunset, a prelude to darkness. The average lifespan of a firefly, meanwhile, is two months. It’s an intense, delicate and short-lived transmission, and the photographer slips into this non-human tempo to capture abstract images before night falls and the signaling stops.
Fireflies emit a cool light that generates no heat, only rhythmic patterns. Reproduction is the message, and copulation extends the code: the ecstasy of communication. Pasolini said he’d exchange the entire energy grid for a single firefly. But a single firefly would only be flashing in a void, receiving no reply. Swarm intelligence is a global behavior that remains unknown to the individual agents who cause it to emerge. In our night skies, meanwhile, Elon Musk’s expanding Star Link satellite system steals the light of the stars with rocket-powered light pollution, out-shining them and forever disorienting life on Earth. We have a new guidance system now, our mirror in the sky. We flash and it flashes back. Heji Shin’s new images show a complex, living system made of bodies and light, communicating and copulating on the cusp of extinction.
John Kelsey NY NY
Installation
views
Works
Works
Josef Strau
17h 03m / -55°, 1993
Reversed chromogenic print
11.81 x 7.87 inches
30 x 20 cm
1 part of 64
Ana Pellicer
El sabor del poder, 2009
Copper
26.38 x 5.71 x 11.02 inches
67 x 14.5 x 28 cm
Ana Pellicer
Celeste rumbo a la escuela, 1996
Copper
24.8 x 16.54 x 9.84 inches
63 x 42 x 25 cm
Ana Pellicer
Emperador Caltzontzin, 1996
Copper
24.8 x 24.41 x 8.66
inches 63 x 62 x 22 cm
Josef Strau
Music Stand 5, 2016
Iron, aluminum, enamel glass lacquer and poster
59.84 x 23.23 x 19.29 inches
152 x 59 x 49 cm
Josef Strau
Music Stand 4, 2016
Iron, tin, wooden beads, enamel and marker
64.17 x 24.41 x 17.13 inches
163 x 62 x 43.5 cm
Josef Strau
Music Stand 1, 2016
Metal structure, weld and lacquer
65.35 x 23.03 x 22.05 inches
166 x 58.5 x 56 cm
Jack Pierson
Thrive, 2009
Metal and plastic
74 x 39 x 4 inches
188 x 99.1 x 10.2 cm
Heji Shin
Camp Habibi IX, 2013
Archival ink jet print
Framed 57.09 x 47.24 inches (145 x 120 cm)
Edition 1/3, 2AP
Heji Shin
Camp Habibi V, 2013
Archival ink jet print
Framed 57.09 x 47.24 inches (145 x 120 cm)
Edition 2/3, 2AP
Heji Shin
Camp Habibi I, 2013
Archival ink jet print
Framed 57.09 x 47.24 inches (145 x 120 cm)
Edition 1/3, 2AP
Heji Shin
Camp Habibi IV, 2013
Archival ink jet print
Framed 57.09 x 47.24 inches (145 x 120 cm)
Edition 1/3, 2AP
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Magazine rack, 2014
Steinless steel and wood
18.11 x 17.91 x 8.46 inches
46 x 45.5 x 21.5 cm
Edition 3/5, 2
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Studies For Two Bedroom Rugs, 2015
Set of two wool rugs
Rugs
37.4 x 70.87 inches
95 x 180 cm
Base
12.4 x 76.97 x 39.57 inches
31.5 x 195.5 x 100.5 cm
Ana Pellicer
Hacha recostada, 1998
Hammered brass and polished iron
55.12 x 14.57 x 15.75 inches
140 x 37 x 40 cm
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Notre-Dame des Fleurs, 2021
Silk screen, acrylic ink, and embroidery on silk
24.02 x 20.08 x 1.18 inches
61 x 51 x 3 cm
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Spice Container, 2018
Sterling silver
2.56 x 5.51 x 2.56 inches
6.5 x 14 x 6.5 cm
Edition 2/2, 1AP
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Untitled, 1988
Charcoal, pastel and collage
16.69 x 12.09 inches
42.4 x 30.7 cm
Framed Size: 21.85 x 15.75 x 1.38
inches 55.5 x 40 x 3.5 cm
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Untitled, 1988
Charcoal and pastel
16.54 x 11.61 inches
42 x 29.5 cm
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Ashtray, 2015
Glazed earthenware ashtray
1.38 x 6.5 inches
3.5 x 16.5 cm
Edition 19/30, 5AP
Heji Shin
Camp Habibi III, 2013
Archival ink jet print
Framed 57.09 x 47.24 inches (145 x 120 cm)
Edition 1/3, 2AP
Heji Shin
Camp Habibi III, 2013
Archival ink jet print
Framed 57.09 x 47.24 inches (145 x 120 cm)
Edition 1/3, 2AP
Karla Kaplun
Laila Saida, 2022
Oil on canvas, lamp
23.62 x 23.62 inches
60 x 60 cm
Painting
Lamp
Signed on verso