May 1, 2024 – September 1, 2024
“Blooming trees on fire. Silhouettes of children are voids filled with stars. Everything is accidental, nothing is accidental. Figures become the landscape, are of the landscape, return to the landscape and are absorbed back by it. Attempts at repair, the need to be forgiven, an inability to forgive. An intuition that things are animated by a mysterious force that is both brutal and beautiful to the point of the unbearable. A sea of grief underneath it all. Birds that are miraculously the colors of rainbows, drops of dew shimmering like crystals on the morning grass. An aging man smelling flowers. A figure in the snow forgetting his past for a moment. Endlessly changing seasons.”
—Misha Kligman
In conversations with Misha Kligman about his work, themes of forgiveness that transcend time and ideology emerge. As he approaches the work of painting, the artist taps into a current of grief that spans history. But beyond human will and action, Kligman describes the impossibility of depicting a mystical force he senses underneath everything, noting, “Most of that which concerns me can’t be represented, yet it’s calling to be represented.”
In the works on view, a sincere question is posed about how to make sensations of light come to life in paint; glittering reflections give shape to water, colorful bands of light refract around a white star, flakes of snow settle on a collar or melt in purple rivulets on the road. Time, perspective, and context are altered as trees interrupt forms, the forest floor shifts, voids erase matter, and prisms of color break through. The titles of the works are expressive, pointing to fear, wisdom, transcendence, and the inescapable. As tempting as it may be to assemble a narrative with these elements, the images in the paintings are not intended as a series of symbols for the viewer to decode, but a place for the transmutation of beauty and grief.
—Erin Dodson, Curator of the Hallmark Art Collection
