Benny Merris, The Secret Life
Caught in a tangle between scientific truth and our own spiritual longing, is a secret life which is undeniable and relentless. We are pleased to present a cross-generational group exhibition, inspired by the 1979 documentary film ‘The Secret Life of Plants’, featuring artists who approach the natural world with an intuitive sense of curiosity and profound inventiveness.
The film, as well as the book on which it is based, revealed unusual phenomena regarding plants, such as perception and feeling, discovered through controversial experimentation. The proposed theories have effectively acted as a stimulus for continued inquiry into materiality, structures of language and time, and the unexpected links between the human anatomy and plants. As these ideas gain momentum they steer towards outrageous results and it is within this wildly imaginative and perhaps hallucinatory state that we find ourselves living the secret life. Here we can be both affectionate as well as methodical while we investigate our connection to other worlds and the multiplicity of the past and the future.
THE SECRET LIFE co-curated with Leidy Churchman: Karl Blossfeldt, Vern Blosum, Alejandro Cesarco, Leidy Churchman, Sara Cwynar, Mark Dion, Nicole Eisenman, Rochelle Goldberg, Dmitri Hertz, David Horvitz, Xylor Jane, Joachim Koester, Elka Krajewska, Kate Levant, Ann Lislegaard, Win McCarthy, Corey McCorkle, Benny Merris, Charlotte Prodger, Anna Rosen, Thomas Schütte, Sergei Tcherepnin, James Welling
453 West 17th St
New York, NY 10011