Chicago Artists Coalition is proud to present new works by Latham Zearfoss (BOLT 2019-20, HATCH 2012-13), curated by Orianna Cacchione, on the Hook platform, opening April 8 and running through April 12. EXPO CHGO ONLINE is complemented by virtual public programs, including select artist studio visits, convenings for established and aspiring collectors, and programming in partnership with leading local museums and institutions.

stems is a new suite of sculptural works by Chicago-based artist, Latham Zearfoss, anchored equally in provocative text and repurposed plant matter. With whimsy and empathy, stems unearths the circumstances and openings that death and dying make possible: rebirth, communion, compassion, new life, and especially, joyful ecstatic remembrance.

In tarot, the Major Arcana card known as “Death” rarely refers to a literal loss of life but to a significant transformation. In this way, the Death card signifies a port – an opening up of fresh possibilities, a becoming of sorts, a change of state, or perhaps a regeneration.

Death is Universal. In seeds, Latham Zearfoss presents an interlocking suite of works as a meditation on death in a year of public and private mourning. Connected by a common material - wood - a found crosscut of a trunk is flanked by four hand sculpted paper pots filled with soil and mulch, each planted with a dwarf sunflower and set on shelves comprised of scavenged wood. Regeneration operates beyond the empty promise of industrial recycling as sunflowers – a natural remediator – sprout from the hand sculptured, naturally dyed paper pots. Once planted, the sunflowers will deepen their roots and in the process, rupture their nurturing pots, which will further decompose, and ultimately disappear. This poesis of interdependence suggests that profound change is intimately tethered to both healing and loss.

Death to the Universal. A tree is a symbol of connection structuring genealogies and relationships – a family tree, the tree of life. It contradicts the universal as the sublimation of difference but rather seeks to find what is in common, or perhaps the commons itself. In the midst of the ongoing struggles to end white supremacy, the tree shown here in four of its material forms recalls mycorrhizas, threadlike fungi that wrap around the roots of trees allowing them to communicate through underground networks in the forest, making a claim for empathic communion with other life forms.

Image: Latham Zearfoss, trunk, 20” x 29”, found tree trunk, neon, electricity, 2021.

Please join us for EXPO CHICAGO's EXPO CHGO ONLINE (April 8–12, 2021), a curated digital exposition of contemporary and modern art and culture.