Understory opens Saturday, August 31, 2024, and continues through Sunday, October 6, 2024. The gallery will host an artists’ reception from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM on Saturday, August 31st at 362 1/2 Warren St, Hudson, NY.
Pamela Salisbury Gallery is pleased to present Understory: Snakes, Snails, and the Forest Floor, a site-wide exhibition inspired by the sottobosco paintings of the 17th century.
Understory includes contemporary depictions of woodland life by over 50 artists, including Kiki Smith, Fred Tomaselli, Suzan Frecon, Roxy Paine, Judy Pfaff, Portia Munson, Sharon Core, Claire Sherman, Tanya Marcuse, Jean Silverthorne, Donna Moylan, among others.
Fruiting bodies of fungi, reptiles, native plants, insects, and other woodland species are explored through diverse media including works on paper, sculpture, painting, photography, embroidery, jewelry, terrariums, and other installations with live plant materials.
The idea for the show began with a love for the flora and fauna of the Hudson Valley woodlands, punctuated with a passion for the 17 Century Dutch master Otto Marseus van Schrieck (ca.1619-1678, Netherlands). Otto Marseus and his contemporaries encouraged the conversation between art and science through the development of a pictorial concept which placed still life within the landscape.
The artist historian Karin Leonhard explains:
The 1650s saw the sudden emergence of a very specific kind of still-life paintings, the so-called sottobosco. Sottoboschi depict botanical and zoological life in dark underwoods or at the humid margins of pools, and as a sub-genre were invented in Italy in the 1650s by the Dutch painter Otto Marseus van Schrieck and adopted by artists like Rachel Ruysch, Elias van den Broeck, Abraham Begeyn and Franz de Hamilton….they have started to gain attention from art historians because of their intermediate position between nature and art, as well as for their inherent microcosmic and microscopic dimensions.
Leonhard, K. (2020). The Fertile Ground of Painting: 17C Still Lifes and Nature Pieces. Brepols-Harvey Miller
The exhibition will be installed on 6 floors of gallery space including two galleries on Warren Space, the sculpture courtyard, and our historic Carriage House. For additional information and/or a complete list of artists, please contact Pamela Salisbury Gallery at info@pamelasalisburygallery.com.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.
—Spoken by Oberon in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
