Is-ness

The title, “Is-ness,” refers to the psychedelic experience of seeing the inter-connectedness and “intrinsic significance” of all things that Aldous Huxley described in Doors of Perception. The collages combine paintings made using gouache, watercolor and ink on handmade paper from saprobic fungi which has been cast onto up-cycled scraps of polystyrene. The paintings reference networks, doodles, and systems while the relationship between the handmade paper and the polystyrene is suggestive of the potential mushrooms have to breakdown petroleum-based materials, a small symbol of hope in an otherwise hopeless climate crisis.

Saprobic fungi decompose matter and are essential to Earth’s ecosystems. There is new research in the field of Mycology, the study of mushrooms, that reveals more about the ecosystems beneath our feet, and the potential that mushroom have to undo some of the environmental havoc of the Anthropocene

Jessica Langley (b. 1981, USA) is a multimedia artist. She has exhibited her work internationally, and has been an artist-in-residence in numerous programs including Skaftfell Center of Visual Art in Iceland, Askeaton Contemporary Art in Ireland, the SPACES World Artist Program in Cleveland, and the Digital Painting Atelier at OCAD-U in Toronto. She was a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship for research in Iceland, and earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008. She is an amateur mycologist, and her artwork and writing have been published in the New York Mycological Society Newsletter, New American Paintings, NPR, Hyperallergic, and Temporary Art Review.