EMILY COUNTS // Field Studies

On view October 21–December 4, 2022
Artist reception Saturday, October 29 (2–4pm)

In Field Studies, gallery artist Emily Counts brings to Nationale a series of new sculptures, presented in the Project Room, that offer curious musings on nature, life cycles, and the fragility of bodies. This exhibition begs the question - what can we observe of the natural world, and our own impermanence in it, when captured at its most delicate and detailed? This collection of ceramic objects serve as meditations on growth, decomposition, and transformation in nature, while simultaneously exploring the beauty and magic within this inevitable process of aging. Field Studies unearths the fated cycle of birth, rebirth, and decomposition at its most fascinating and jarring minutiae: rotting and bitten fruits, eccentric insects, and withered flowers. One figurative work, Grandmother Witch, presents as a lighted bust dressed in a relief wilting daisy sweater. Part of the artist’s ongoing self-portrait and matriarch series, this piece brings to the viewers’ attention the ways in which nature can envelop human anatomy as well - this figure is part of the past, yet strangely futuristic in her facial assemblage and dripping, bodily oddities. Luring in our attention with shining gold, and pops of neon, the image becomes almost psychedelically distorted upon closer inspection. In this manner, we come to ask ourselves, how can we better perceive and ultimately memorialize our own selves?

Counts’ signature color exploration and fantastical arrangements here take a darker turn. In an attempt to understand the natural world, to collect true observations, the depictions on display within the gallery are not perfect, glossy representations of an idyllic landscape. Instead, they are studies of emotions and memories as they appear to the artist, interlaced with a more private reckoning of her own relation to our physical world. Counts brings to viewers a different perspective on our everyday surroundings, a shadier underbelly, yet encourages us to still search for the beauty and softness that can live within our fear and anxiety of uncertainty. Like a fairytale story whose true, more ominous origins come to be revealed, these works do not shy from attracting attention and providing an alternate timeline. Each sculpture aptly teeters on a balance between the pretty and the gritty, allowing for a multitude of possibilities.

Emily Counts was born in Seattle, WA, where she currently lives and works. She studied at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin and the California College of the Arts, where she received her BFA. Drawing on craft traditions she creates ceramic and mixed media sculptures that explore connectivity, identity, memory, and merging a sense of the past with the futuristic. Her work has been exhibited nationally in institutions including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Torrance Art Museum in California, at Oregon Contemporary in Oregon, and in Washington at the Bellevue Arts Museum. Her largest solo project to date will open in February 2023 at the Museum of Museums in Seattle, WA. Counts has received grants from Artist Trust, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and The Ford Family Foundation. She was an artist in residence at Raid Projects in Los Angeles, Plane Space in New York, and a 2020 resident at the Varda Artists Residency Program in Sausalito, CA. A past member of SOIL Gallery in Seattle, WA, and Durden and Ray in Los Angeles, CA, Counts is currently represented by Nationale in Oregon and studio e in Washington.

PRESS & MORE
October Highlights, Ashley Gifford, Arts & About PDX, October 20, 2022
This Sculptor Creates Unique, Nature-Informed, Exploratory Art That is Both Eerie and Beautiful, Meredith Schneider, GIMME, October 2022
Recommended Visual Art Pick, EverOut/Portland, November 2022

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