AUTOMAT Collective is excited to present MYTHOGEMS, a group show featuring Philippa Beardsley, Alex Griffin, Jackie Shatz, and Zachary Simonson, curated by Kimi Pryor.

░░░░

I imagine cities so I can get lost in them.

- Charles Simic, “The World Doesn’t End”

Vestiges of thought, memories, and dreams settle and sift within us in sedimentary layers. Mining psyche, the artists in this show use this raw material to build Mythogems, units of mythological meaning which extend beyond personal interiority into the shared culture of myth. The butterfly, nightbird, cat, lion, lover, and angelic being become emblems who guard portals, pass thresholds, and navigate between the worlds of shape and spirit. Quiet chambers, corridors, courtyards, and cities speak to secret histories and the ghostly remnants of energy and personal exchange. These mysterious forms and spaces mirror aspects of consciousness; reflecting on those aspects of ourselves which exist in realms outside of our prosaic everyday.

Jackie Shatz and Zachary Simonson extract crystallized spaces and figures from the subconscious, blurring boundaries of painting and sculpture in the process. Simonson constructs dreamlike architectural models - inspired by cloisters and arcades - as imaginary sanctuaries where one can play and explore, as well as be hidden and vulnerable. Shatz selects images from paintings as guides for her intuitive sculptures, which act as free-floating embodiments of emotion and psychological states while alluding to classical and mythological archetypes.

Philippa Beardsley and Alex Griffin paint from photographs and reflections their encounters with old buildings in Philadelphia; using layers and histories of mark-making, scraping, and erasure to create dreamy, intimate tableaux of places once stumbled upon. Repopulating these spaces with spectral figures and animals, the sites exist in a timeless lucent space between memory and imagination.