○ Title: Philosopher's Stone

○ Period: Sat., 3. 28. 2020 – Sun., 8. 16. 2020

○ Artists: Ville Kansanen, Gretchen LeMaistre, Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Diane Pierce, Gretchen LeMaistre, Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Diane Pierce

Datz Museum of Art introduces the works of four photographers from the U.S. West Coast at this year’s first exhibition, . The four artists are Ville Kansanen, Gretchen LeMaistre, Rhonda Lashley Lopez, and Diane Pierce, who embody the invisible mental world through each of their unique methods and creative processes. We invite you to a photography space that captures nature, humans, art, and significant vibrations in between by light.

Alchemy in Photos.

For old alchemists, the four elements of water, fire, earth and air are the sources of the material world. The so-called "Philosopher's Stone" or "Sorcerer's Stone" they were searching for means a mysterious material that transforms any mediocre material into gold. Although it is a failed science, alchemy is still interesting magic for modern poets and artists because it symbolizes the creation of energy through the coexistence of conflicting and contradictory values. The four photographers participating in the exhibition show their depth of experience of life as a beautiful product, polished through photography. These artists and philosophers of contemporary life ask us serious questions about life itself.

Fascinated by the desert, which is a forbidding, vast, mysterious and natural landscape, Ville Kansanen performs a kind of place-specific installation work and presents it in staged photography. The desert, regarded as the source of fixed existence, leads to meditation on the nature’s cycles and summons humans as spiritual beings dreaming of eternity through the artist's work. Gretchen LeMaistre showcases work she has created against time on the island where she spent her childhood. The that photographed the clear traces of tides and the series reproduced through photography experiments on light and matter turn into an abstract photography with a hidden narrative as the history of the artist's own and place overlaps. Rhonda Lashley Lopez reflects natural moments of nature resonating deeply within the eyes of the mind, on paper, by plating it with gold or through the unique process of photo-chemistry. The alchemy-like delicate printing process is the result of the light of nature in the artist being transferred to matter. Diane Pierce contemplates about the relationship between rational and irrational surrounding objects and reconstructs them in a photographic manner. The intertwined relationship between materials explored in the drawing process forms a new context with the coincidence captured through photographs, and the 3D relationship converted into a 2D becomes a space for 4D imagination.

Alchemy may imply a quest in which the human passion to attain something noble can be expressed. In today’s society, dominated by reason and logic, alchemy is a symbol that expresses artists’ imagination and dreams, proving that human beings cannot live only by the logic of science and reason and that they need nature and life, art and spiritual imagination. In the work of four artists, profound reflections on nature, human, and photographic art, mind becomes a material and the material becomes a noble art of spirit. Art is a spring of wisdom for those who dream of high-purity ideals that can only be achieved in series. All of this helps us remember the things obtained through enduring the trials of life in the exceptionally challenging times of Spring 2020.

Kang Min-Jung, Head of the Arts Department

Please check the website of the Datz Museum of Art for details.