Underdonk

press release

PERPETUAL and NOCTURNAL  

June 23 – July 30 2023

Works by Fiona Buchanan, Chris Daharsh & Anthony Palocci Jr.
Curated by Georgia Hourdas

Magic is discovered and born anew with each person living on earth in perpetuity. There is an undisputed ethereal quality that exists in the night. It is in the pregnancy of night that magic originates.  The work in this show celebrates the mysteries of the corners of the soul, from the twilight time of sunset to the darkness of the witching hour, through into the clarity of dawn.

As the sun sets, the world is thrown into a velvet blanket of silence and distortion. Since the human eye has not developed the ability to see in the dark quite as well as our animal relatives, nothing is as it seems in the dead of night. That which was familiar in the light of day is contorted and made strange by nightfall. Shadows shift forms from the known into the obscure. The moon, pale and cold, lights what it can, leaving the rest to our imagination. Objects grow curious, signs become illegible and natural textures reign. The new strangeness of the world imbues mundanity with an everlasting arcane significance. 

Of course there is a very real danger lurking in the witching hour. Suffused (infused) with the potency of night magic, there is a  mortal challenge that can make or break one’s eternal being. One must make it to the dawn of a new day following a treacherous dark night of the soul. It is said that shadows will creep in at the periphery of one’s vision whispering their nightmarish temptations, attempting to snuff out that divine light we share as a species. It is up to the individual to dispel these corruptions through the focus of one’s eyes and sheer will of spirit, in order to emerge more whole, more resplendent than before.  

 In Palocci’s work we see the sun retreating from a large swath of land, giving away the last glimmer of its acidic green gaze to the pervasive black night. In this painting the field descends into the dark, quietly knowing and preparing for the cycle to begin. Once the sun is gone, our eyes searching in the twilight find the detritus of man is left in textural assemblages – much like the work of Christopher Daharsh. These sculptural objects seem pitted and pock-marked. Bruised and Barnacled. 

Buchanan’s midnight valley of blank facades leads us into a dream world where the viewer can explore a mysterious sacred carnival of spirit across the work’s rolling hills. While Fiona’s other paintings are shown in an idyllic daytime they suggest what one may witness at the end of a spell. Buchanan’s multicolored grasses are uncanny, like lingering illusions changing into dawn.

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Fiona Buchanan was born in Swampscott, Massachusetts and received a BFA in painting from Boston University. She has participated in residencies such as the Yale Norfolk summer school of art in Norfolk, Connecticut, the Wassaic Project Residency Program in Wassaic, New York and the Jentel Artist Residency in Banner, Wyoming among others. Buchanan has shown at Spring Break Art Show, PAGE (NYC) in New York, O’flaherty’s Gallery, NYC, Greenpoint Terminal Gallery in Brooklyn, Underdonk in Brooklyn as well as Sluice Art Fair in London. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Christopher Daharsh (B. 1990, Omaha, Nebraska) received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Painting and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2012. Christopher has attended a number of residencies since then, including two yearlong residencies from the Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, Missouri), Art Farm (Marquette, Nebraska), and the Factatory (Lyon, France). He was a recipient of a public art grant from the Downtown Council of Kansas City in 2015. Christopher’s curatorial practice is reflected in a group show he organized at Field of Play(Brooklyn) and his curatorial membership at Below Grand (NYC). Recently Christopher has shown work at Haw Contemporary (Kansas City), the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art(Overland Park, Kansas), Mother (Beacon, NY), Ekru Project (Kansas City), Capsule Bikini (Lyon, France), Les Limbes (St. Etienne, France), Field of Play (Brooklyn), and Deanna Evans (NYC). Christopher currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Anthony Palocci Jr. was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1987 and grew up in neighboring Beverly where he went to Monserrat College of Art. Anthony attended Pratt Institute and received his MFA in 2012. He was teaching at Massachusetts College of Art and Design from 2013 to 2021. He now lives and works in NYC. 

Georgia Hourdas was born in Tarpon Springs, FL. She began her art career in 2013 at a now defunct DIY venue & gallery known as the Venture Compound, where she helped put on art shows. She received her BFA in painting from the University of South Florida in 2015. In her final year of undergrad, she was invited to join the artist collective Quaid. In 2016 Georgia moved to New York to pursue a career as a painter. Herwork has appeared in Ortega y Gasset, Marvin Gardens, Flux Factory and Underdonk. She is also an active member of the artist-run space Underdonk.