NEW YORK, NY.- DC Moore Gallery will present JoAnne Carson: Cosmic Chatter, the artist’s debut exhibition with the gallery. Working across two and three dimensions, with new paintings, related collages and drawings, and a large-scale sculpture, Carson’s new body of work offers exuberant visions of life on the cusp of another world.

Over the last few years, JoAnne Carson has focused on the forms of trees, creating hybrid creatures that shift between human, plant, and animal. Evoking the ambiguity of life in the Anthropocene, where borders between natural and synthetic have collapsed, Carson invents new forms, each tree its own speculative universe. The trees are characters bestowed with agency and energy, projecting certain personalities or animistic power.

In 2011, Carson began cultivating an elaborate garden in Vermont, with topiaries, fruit trees, and perennials planted on a steep slope. When she first began gardening, she focused only on the area that she could view from the window, which framed the space as a composition. Functioning as immersive sculpture, laboratory, and a study for a painting, the life force of the garden has permeated Carson’s paintings.

The sculpture Chlorophyllia (2017) is a free-standing bouquet figure, a tree character from her paintings realized in three-dimensions. In contrast to the paintings, these floral forms are all in shades of white, resembling a fossilized or skeletal figure. The hybrid plant form is bursting with life, however, the monochrome palette also suggesting newness or potential transformation.

The recent paintings reflect the frenzied energy of contemporary life, the enchanting and overwhelming qualities of our visually supercharged environments. In two large diptychs, Carson explores the simultaneity of a split screen, mirroring the experience of simultaneous digital feeds, tabs, windows, which compete or cohere. Night and day, dawn and dusk appear next to each other in the same sky, evoking a sense of wonderment.

An illustrated catalogue with an interview of JoAnne Carson by David Rimanelli accompanies the exhibition.

JoAnne Carson’s work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions including The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois; and the Zillman Art Museum, Bangor, Maine. She has participated in notable group exhibitions at institutions such as the Whitney Biennial Exhibition, New York; the New Orleans Museum, Louisiana; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and the Sheldon Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. Carson is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, the Louise Bourgeois Residency from Yaddo, and an individual artist grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in New York City, Carson splits her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Shoreham, Vermont.