Separation is an illusion — and the body can be the culprit. “Body Full of Stars,” curated at Upper East Side art gallery Ceysson & Bénétière by Brooklyn-based artist Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, reminds viewers of the truth: the base elements that underpin everything in our reality originate in the lifecycle of actual stars. Some date back to the big bang. 14 contemporary artists, working from oil painting to sculpture, give their answer, then, interpreting infinity. Pizza was served at the opening reception on June 21, where Penn Badgley and Ira Glass mulled about. Carl Sagan said “we’re all made of star stuff.” It’s so ubiquitously true, we might sometimes forget.
Kline first got connected with the gallery, based between New York and Paris, in 2017 — when she was in a group show. Years later, director Maelle Ebelle asked her to curate their summer show.
I see so much division and disintegration in the world right now and really wanted to create something that somehow countered these forces of disunity,
Kline told FAD of the impetus behind her celestial concept.
I had my second daughter this past November, and in the midst of so much chaos in this country and on our planet, the process of bringing new life into this world reminded me of our inherent oneness and how we all come from the same place and same Creator.
Like the art in this show, Sagan’s quote isn’t always as pretty as it sounds. Several works contributed by Samira Abassy demonstrate her ability to codeswitch between sweetness and extreme viscerality — and from charcoal to oil.
A lot of people don’t know that we’re literally made of exploded stars
Kline said, noting the necessary coexistence of creation and destruction in our universe.
Look at your wrist and the blueish veins. The blood flowing through them contains hemoglobin, a protein that has four iron atoms incorporated into its structure. Iron is only naturally produced in one place—in the core of dying stars. Every time you look at your veins remember that you’re built from, and kept alive by, pieces of stardust.” Humanity’s existence isn’t underpinned by sweet twinkling — violent blasts make us possible.
Kline’s curation focused on harmonizing the many established and emerging artists she admires. I ended up at the exhibition myself to see what my friend Carlo D’Anselmi contributed — a vivid yet sublime scene titled “Peace of Mind” in the spirit of the artist’s latest series, which was presented at a sprawling show in Taipei in May. Here a dog and bird accompany two close, unclothed figures, but the arrow piercing an orange perched on the bolder one’s head marks the composition’s true centerpiece.
The painting is a glimpse at the madness and danger of living, but is a wink to all that as if to say, ‘it’s going to be okay,
D’Anselmi explained,
though the secondary figure is still very concerned about the arrow. It’s two states of the same mind.
Suzannah Wainhouse, meanwhile, still off the heels of a solo show with Sargent’s Daughters on Manhattan’s equal and opposite Lower East Side, explores the soul’s dark enigma through abstraction. In “God’s Eye,” vague forms coalesce into a visual playground. Eyes peer from the abyss. Ceramicists Dini Dixon and Sabra Moon Elliot give their ruminations freestanding life — figuratively, and abstractly.
Organizing the exhibition provided Kline herself a new perspective on the parallels between the universe within and without around any single body. The artist and curator, raised Baha’i, cited a holy text: “Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form When within thee the universe is folded?”
[I’ve] heard this repeated since childhood, and never really understood what it meant,
Kline said.
I’m starting to think that the spiritual meaning is that our soul is vast and powerful and inexplicable. And that the tangible, physical meaning, is that we are literally made of stars, and the universe really is folded up inside each of us.
Exhibiting Artists :
Samira Abbassy, Yevgeniya Baras, Carlo D’Anselmi, Dini Dixon, Chioma Ebinama , Sabra Moon Elliot, Ted Gahl, An Hoang, Adrianne Rubenstein, Carolyn Salas, Marcus Leslie Singleton, Andrew Tarlow, Suzannah Wainhouse, Nadia Yaron
Body Full of Stars, Curated by Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, June 21st – July 28th, 2023, Ceysson & Bénétière
