April 5th-29th, 2012
Opening Reception Friday April 6th, 5-8pm
The partners at Åarhus are familiar with Michael Pollen’s book ‘The Botany of Desire’ and although we all affectionately embrace the subject matter, this show we think could have very little to do with potatoes, tulips, or maryjane. We just really like the title… because of what else it brings to mind. For example; wasn’t this whole crazy mess the world is in started supposedly by a young squirrely couple in a garden? Okay, one of them bit an apple … but now look what’s happened! Sure botany had something to do with it, but desire, it would appear was the key element, the prerequisite, the virile catalyst, for the growth of the human species and therefore all that we’ve accomplished, and have managed to screw up along the way. Isn’t it desire for change, desire for a better place, desire for love, which is the driving force behind poetry, music, invention? Isn’t it the desire for power that drives narcissists to politics, to lead the masses to liberty or ruination?! Isn’t it the desire to connect to, to consume ourselves into the human body that drives us to all measure of art and even madness? Desire, and how it can bloom and grow like a succulent plum or become a vine, wrapping its host with a suffocating grip; desire, the botany of DESIRE, is what Åarhus is talking about: the thoughts, the images, the objects, the fruits… of our desires.
Joe Ascrizzi
Dance of Eros, Logos
sepia drawing on incised, water-gilded gesso panel
6″ x 10″
Kenny Cole
Patriotic Tree
gouache on paper
8 1/2″ x 11″
Featured artists include; Joe Ascrizzi, Nancy Morgan Barnes, Kenny Cole, Al Crichton, Maryjean Crowe, Bill Davis, David Estey, Jay Gibson, Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Richard Mann, Ed Moffitt, Joan Proudman, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick R. Keith Rendall, Mike Silverton, James Strickland and Seth Whited.
