ARTIST TALK Friday Dec 13th, 7 pm
Maja Petric: Specimens of Time
November 23, 2024 - January 25, 2024
Gallery Hours 4-8pm Thurs, Fri, Sat
Specimens of Time: Burn immerses viewers in the sensory essence of Pacific Northwest rainforests. Using optical materials, light, and real-time data, it unveils transitions and ecological shifts shaped by climate dynamics. At its heart is a suspended sculpture that reacts dynamically to environmental changes, complemented by wall-mounted light boxes and lenticular prints. These interconnected elements merge light, color, and motion, inviting a visceral exploration of the rainforest's vitality and fragility as it responds to an evolving world. Suggested Top Picks for November by The Seattle Times!
Watch a video of Maja discussing her piece
Maja Petric is an award-winning contemporary artist who creates installations and sculptures using custom-developed new media. Since 2001, she has been creating artwork that seamlessly incorporates light and advanced technology such as AI. Her works aim to explore how our existence is interconnected, and she pushes the limits of emerging media to elicit these connections viscerally.
Maja's artwork has been showcased internationally, including exhibitions at the FOR-SITE, Henry Art Gallery, Farol Santander Sao Paulo, MadArt Studio, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Landmark Hong Kong, and others. She has been commissioned to produce installations for National Geographic, SEATAC Airport, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Landmark Hong Kong, and Amazon, and other institutions.
Curatorial Statement
Specimens of Time is the eighth in our 2024-2025 series, Time is the Subject. All the artists showing this year took time as their subject or considered the human subject in relation to time. By working in light, Petric takes on both.
“…Light is a sort of concept that walks among appearances; it does not have a subjective existence, save when it becomes for us. Light does not know the world, but I see the world thanks to light.” – Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Like scent and taste, light undercuts our reflective cognition. We live at the mercy of light. Daylight wakes us, catching us at the transition from passive to active, calling us into consciousness without our consent. In the artwork, light takes advantage of our attention to it, awakening us into awareness of the data and the place from which it comes.
In a world where we are constantly thinking about climate data, these sculptures and installation offer a moment to feel the data. Data visualization focuses on offering ways to clarify and understand data. This work, however, uses data as a medium to draw out an emotional response to the content.
Having caught the viewer with light, Petric’s pieces evoke natural places —the deep rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef, the Antarctic. Petric speaks of showing the sublime in nature. The artwork, however, is beautiful.
Beauty always places us in a moral dilemma. We must ask ourselves how we have been drawn in by the beauty, whether we ought to have been drawn in, whether we have the right to withdraw from the political into the beautiful.
The end, the completion, of this work should be action. Beauty and light have caught our attention to the world beyond the work. In order to remain sublime, these places must remain unvisited and untouched, like the materials trapped within the installation. But we might be brave and let ourselves feel their loss — enough that we feel impelled to act.
Hear Maja and Vestibule curator discuss Maja’s work and its intersection with technology and design on The Art In Steam, a Femme Designers Podcast with Nour Diab Yunes.