Upcoming Solo Exhibition at TOTAH, titled CURRENTS
Opening September 8th, from 6-8pm
TOTAH presents CURRENTS, an exhibition of recent works by artist Melissa McGill, on view from September 8th, 2022 through October 15th, 2022. This is McGill’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Melissa McGill’s understanding of our symbiotic relationship with water and the environment runs through her collaborative public art works: Constellation, Red Regatta, and In the Waves. In the more intimate works on view in CURRENTS, water is as much a vital substance as an expressive language—be this articulated through wind, waves, shifting light and shadow, or the flow of time itself.
Throughout CURRENTS, water’s various gestures are expressed using a range of materials. McGill draws us into water’s inclinations, engaging them by way of sight, sound, reflections, and movement. Her sculptural glass installation transmutes a series of 2-dimensional, photographic surfaces into an immersive environment, where the subtle play of light and translucency recalls the changing yet constant nature of the tides. Similarly, McGill’s Box of Waves series transmits movements in time across different elements, expressing our ongoing dialogue with nature. To open the box is like opening a portal into a moment-in-process—one marked by the perpetual reciprocity of wind and water.
McGill describes the world on its own terms, showing how the water inside us speaks to the water surrounding us. The calligraphic evidence she observes in nature reminds us how our primordial mode of being is without “edges,” without definite separateness between things, but exists in a non-linear, circular time that pervades the planet. Inviting us to become more porous—to move within and like water—McGill recreates an environing script that doesn’t rely on traditional language so much as it ciphers the essence of translation, conversation, collaboration, and symbiosis.
