NEW YORK, NY.- Edwynn Houk Gallery is presenting I, Narcissus, an exhibition of new work by Ron Norsworthy.

Centered around Norsworthy’s long standing interest in spatial poetics, narrative and allegory, these eleven works provide an extended reflection on both the personal experience and social construction of beauty, while also reconsidering narcissism as a virtue of self-love. Expressed through Norsworthy’s distinctive process of creating digital collages and then translating them into three-dimensional form—what he calls paintings—the works oscillate between their photographic illusion and the transparency of their making.

Norsworthy uses the myth of Echo and Narcissus as a thematic point of departure for the exhibition, reinterpreting the myth’s central narrative thread through a contemporary sensibility. Originating from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the story told of how Narcissus, after spurning Echo’s love, was cursed to love in such a way that could never be reciprocated. After then seeing himself reflected in a pool of water and becoming infatuated with his own beauty, he was unable to remove himself from that spot, eventually dying long after his youth passed and with it the source of his original affection. Though often invoked today as a cautionary tale about the consequences of excessive self-regard and admiration, Norsworthy would have us reframe the story to produce an entirely new set of questions: What exactly is wrong with loving oneself? Who does society deem to be beautiful, and why? If beauty is a social construction, then what else might be as well?

Norsworthy was born in South Bend, Indiana and currently lives and works in Connecticut and New Jersey, respectively. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; The Old Stone House, Brooklyn, NY; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY; Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT; Standard Space, Sharon, CT; Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ; the International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, NE; the New York Historical Society, NYC; the Governor’s Island Art Fair, Governors Island, NY; the Armory Show, NY; Paris Photo; and it is also in the permanent collection of the Newark Museum of Art. In 2023, Norsworthy was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in Visual Arts.