Hunter Shaw Fine Art is pleased to present The Pearl Eater, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Evangeline AdaLioryn. The Pearl Eater is comprised of recent sculptural works, ritual objects arranged as a shrine, a sanctuary inviting quietude and contemplation.
"People think we lure humans into the sea, seduce them into their own destruction. But we were humans once, too, and the sea lured us. The ocean offered us the possibility of perpetual recreation, so long as we were willing to lay our old vessels to rest.
In the water we are always swimming and always new. The incarnation of transformation, the eternal object of idolatry. It seems like we were always here, this way, in these waters. Like there was never any water without us. But we came here. We chose it.
Part of why we left is because the old forms got tired, reached their limit. Too much effort, too much resistance. We wanted the next dimension. We wanted recuperation for what we had been.
What happened to our old vessels, the other bodies? Some of us let them disintegrate and decompose, become particles in the water. Some of us tucked them away in the depths, covered them up with rocks, sand, and shells to hide and protect them. Some of us stayed close by, guarding the old vessels like they were our children.
She made her vessel visible, forever venerated and armed. Rather than obscure or obliterate her, she cast her face in plaster in its final days. She gave the face a body, a matrix of crystalline ceramic spines and horns, with pink silk wrapped around her organs, hidden pearls and hair from horses. She gave her bones and a structure, so she’d never break. She took her out of the sand and put her on the wall in the front of a room, where people would stand underneath her looking up, where bees and flies would land on the folds of her torso. A symbol of herself, floating forever, getting the rest she never got when she was her and her's."
— Cyrus Simonoff
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