Exhibition

In the Wild Beyond

Olivia Guterson
July 27 - September 4, 2024

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Photos by Kyle Powell

Louis Buhl & Co. is pleased to present a new exhibition with Olivia Guterson, titled In the Wild Beyond and opening July 27, 2024. Guterson is a recent graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she received her MFA in painting this past May. In the Wild Beyond will be the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery since announcing representation in 2023. 

In the Wild Beyond delves into themes of integration and separation, placement and displacement, and the perpetual motion of migration. Through a dynamic use of materials such as bones, shells, beads, sand, and rocks, the artist constructs textures, gestures, and rhythms that reflect on the human condition as inherently disorderly and fluid—a poignant response to the idea that humans are fixed, contained beings. Choreographing the histories, movements and stories of her materials together in different figurations, Guterson ushers closer towards the unknown. “I am thinking about brokenness, refusal, and fugitivity,” she expresses. “And because I do not yet feel at home in my body and I am not yet fluent in the mother tongue of my spirit, I struggle to articulate that for which there is no language.” 

Guterson’s paintings—or “offerings” as she feels to be a more appropriate description—emerge from gestural movements and textural accumulations that acknowledge grief’s extensive impact on both the ecological and societal realms. By recognizing grief as a collective phenomenon, the artist explains, there is the possibility of mapping and locating loss, which can reshape and foster new perspectives while creating space for rituals, inquiry, and connection. Uplifting the historic value of materials in her offerings, such as trade beads and cowrie shells, Guterson engages with and investigates traditional notions of her African ancestry. Originating from European traders, these beads served as currency, adornment, and symbolism in African cultures; cowries played similar roles, also used for divination and rituals. Incorporating these compositional elements, her offerings invite a fresh perspective on their cultural significance beyond materiality. They underscore the resilience of her ancestors and even herself, adapting to new economies and creatively repurposing objects for meaningful uses. 

Central to the featured body of work are the shaped panels that channel avenues of wayfinding, placemaking, and honoring. Inspired by the Jewish tradition of laying specially selected stones on the graves of loved ones that overtime develop cairns, the forms symbolize a permanence of memory and allow for spiritual communication. The shapes within the stacked canvases have the potential to stand as independent entities, yet they exist in a choreography of balance and negotiation, evoking familial connections and the dynamics between mother and child—a theme which often finds its way into her work. The titles of the paintings are deeply informed by Spirituals, a type of religious folk song that is most closely associated with the enslavement of African people in the American South. These songs, characterized by their call-and-response form, resonate with Guterson’s intuitive creative process, and embody a profound yearning and melancholic truth that reflects her continual search for belonging.

Olivia Guterson: In the Wild Beyond is on view from July 27 - September 4, 2024 at Louis Buhl & Co.

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