Various Small Fires is pleased to present the debut solo exhibition in Asia of New York based artist Sojourner Truth Parsons (b. 1984, Vancouver, CA) and the artist’s first solo exhibition at VSF.
Parsons’ introspective paintings often offer glimpses into her personal environment, lived psychological processes, and the multi-perspectival identification of the self vs. the other. In her newest body of work, quotidian still lifes and interior scenes are populated by clusters of blooming flowers and flickering candles, metallic moons hovering against cavernous black backgrounds, and silhouetted figures often gilded in gold. Abstract single-toned swaths of color and geometric shapes—inspired by 80s and 90s graphics lining timeless New York storefront windows—are cut in contrast with loose brushstrokes that give the paintings an emotive, cinematic quality. Emanating from darkness, bits and pieces appear seemingly by candlelight, culminating as rapturous reflections of daily life from a recent memory or lucid dream.
Psychoanalysis and psychic landscapes have long been centerpoints of Parsons’ practice, a component of the artist’s work that often goes unacknowledged. Playing with the notion of multiplicity and the fashioning of distinct personas, Parsons engages the subjective dimensions of loneliness, a recurring theme in her work, but one that resonates even more acutely amidst the current pandemic. In works such as “It’s a girl” and “Power couple,” women are rendered as “coupling” with their solitude, reveling in their own mirrored thoughts and reflections. Images of isolation and privacy are portrayed with curiosity and expansiveness. A poised figure gazes assertively over broken glass in “Problems are treasures,” while another reclines pensively against a strip of moonlight in an abstracted landscape – possibly bed linens or a riverbank – in “Born glow flourish wither die.
