Exhibitions
Darlene Charneco | Harmonious Holobiont
Date and place
Place: Praxis NY
Start Date: November 17 2022
End Date: January 14 2023
Description
Praxis is pleased to present Harmonious Holobiont, a solo exhibition by artist Darlene Charneco. The show will be open from Thursday, November 17th to Saturday, January 14th, 2023.
The opening reception will be on Thursday, November 17th, from 6 to 8 pm.
We are open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm, at 501 W 20th Street, New York, NY, 10011.
Inspired by vivid dreams and studies of symbiosis in nature, Darlene Charneco’s works explore and navigate the layered spaces we live in, often presenting them as part of a growing organism. Developing her own tactile language, the artist creates three-dimensional, mixed-media ‘touchmaps’ to orient, sense, and express within a world that is continually shifting and changing through our expanded networks of communication. Charneco weaves nails together into wooden panels to create tactile topographical fields that gradually grow into new microscopy-like images within an evolving complex organism.
In Harmonious Holobiont, the artist continues her series of tapestry-like Letters to the Universe, in a practice of hammering out hopes and wishes for humanity and our planet, while asking for guidance and support for all beings in gradual co-evolution. The term Holobiont refers, specifically, to the concept of seeing ourselves as one complex entity including all the various species of the planet.
As Earth faces seemingly perpetual challenges of internal conflicts, war, climate change and disease, Charneco is inspired and motivated by studies of symbiosis in evolution, and glimpsed visions of mutualistic pathways forward. With scale-shifts of perspective, she hopes we may recognize the planet’s intricately interwoven diversity as our collective strength and understand each of our unique roles in its unfolding complex beauty.
In these weaves, positive wishes and visualizations for humanity are condensed to the hammering of each nail, and repeated many times, so that when sitting to work, the artist includes various concerns that have arisen throughout the creation of the piece. It is the process of renewing hope, determination and optimism in the accumulation of our collective small actions that the artist hopes we all can all relate to and be energized by.
As part of an ongoing vow and vision that underlies the artworks, Darlene Charneco has decided that a percentage from the sale of each piece will be distributed to help nourish a garden of global causes and nonprofit organizations that are working daily to bring a more benevolent, compassionate world into being.
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More Information
Born in 1971 in New York City of parents from Mayaguez and Moca, Puerto Rico, Darlene Charneco’s works explore and navigate the hybrid spaces we live in, often presenting them as part of a growing organism.
Charneco received her BFA Magna Cum Laude from Southampton College of Long Island University and attended SUNY Stony Brook for MFA studies. She has exhibited and guest-lectured at numerous museums and galleries, including the Parrish, Katonah, Islip, and Hunterdon Museums and was awarded the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2017.
She currently lives on the East End of Long Island, working at her Studio at the William Steeple Davis Trust Residency in Orient, New York.
Regarding her work, Charneco notes: “My hammered nail pieces are an ongoing series of artwork inspired by the common thread of ritual found in nearly all cultures and religions. Each wall-piece is a tactile ‘page’ containing hopes, wishes and aspirations. Created in the spirit of the European monastic scribe illuminating manuscripts or a Tibetan monk creating a sand mandala, these works encompass both the pursuit of an evolved self and hopes for a more enlightened humanity. They are objects of tangible human optimism literally hammered out, in a personal code of nails. When I first began ‘writing’ with nails in my artwork, I wanted to create a language that could be felt as well as seen. The labor-intensive process clicked strongly with me, inducing a near- meditative state. I now see the nails as tangible units of my intentions which shift in identity from language as we know it, into the weave of the physical world.”
