Julieta Beltran Lazo, Vesna Jovanovic, Bobbi Meier, SHENEQUA
Palpable
Reception: Wednesday, November 12, 4:00-6:00 p.m. Artist Talk at 4:30

What does it mean to inhabit a body? When we consider the figure, it often assumes a ground, demanding a contextual narrative implication. It comes with the baggage of formal beauty, and a sense of containment, a surface that may not acknowledge the inherent messiness of lived experience. Body can be all encompassing, a universe that is intimate before it becomes ‘figurative’. We occupy these bodies that we can’t know completely. We piece together stories through our shared humanity, even with these glaring gaps of knowledge. The artists in this exhibition question and revel in this inquiry…some focus on interior connections, understanding that getting a visceral sense of a small part gives us a truer picture of the immensity of the whole. Some provide the thread of a surrealist gesture, engaging with the absurd.

Jovanovic pairs the precision of carefully rendered objects with pooling pigment, her internal views punctuated, and at times penetrated with cultural and societal interjections. There is a prankish tension between the lived body and the observed body, between attraction and repulsion. Beginning with elegant spills of ink that surrender to chance, Jovanovic harnesses potential for visceral response with an abruptness of unexpected objects. These discordant elements provoke discomfort and laughter. What contains the body, and what does the body contain?

Meier also embraces discomfort and implications of what is hidden, unspoken or embarrassing. Her bulbous sculptures are aggressively soft. The work challenges our sense of boundaries— what are we seeing? Are we supposed to be seeing this? Her imposing sculpture Decorum may call to mind a mix of bodies or parts of bodies -figurative in a completely unexpected way. The scale and blank whiteness recalls marble, hard and unyielding. On closer inspection it is soft and malleable – something that has just been unearthed or emergent, almost larval.

SHENEQUA’s work reveals diasporic concerns and honors the value of ancestral intelligence. In her textile-based pieces, the warp and weft often include synthetic hair, a connection to family and community that alludes to a profound intimacy. The fraught history of the representation and use of hair includes the beauty of adornment as well as status and identity. A textile can be as prosaic as protection for the body, or as profound as a sacred object, an archive of cultural memory. In the artist’s hand, powerful structures emerge— containing galvanizing remnants that reconfirm the presence of touch.

Beltran Lazo’s work may align most with figurative tradition, in that you can find some familiar contours of a figure. Yet, there is a palpable psychological intensity that belies any neat categorization. She is also conversant with the abject, and the cyclical nature of identity and self-reflection. There is a sense of ambiguity in some of the paintings that aligns with the fluid nature of memory and invites the viewer to project their own sense of self. Contextual clues point to what is present, amplifying the rootedness of bodily experience in a time when the virtual permeates every sphere of our lives.

In 2025, how do you stay alive and awake in your empathy while also feeling protected and functional? This can begin with our bodies. This work reminds us of our fundamental shared experiences – that we will all be helpless in the face of these bodies we inhabit. We observe ourselves and find power in dialogue with ourselves. We can approach identity in more nuanced ways. We are fragile, we are temporary. There is a beauty in that.

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Tags: Bobbi Meier, Julieta Beltrán Lazo, O'Connor Gallery, Palpable, SHENEQUA, the Body, The O'Connor Gallery, Vesna Jovanovic