Blue Flowers curated by Liam Considine and Becca Mann

About

Blue Flowers presents works of postmodern and contemporary art in an exploration of a cross-cultural symbol of enlightenment and intoxication. The blue lotus, known as the Dream Flower, was used in ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica to induce trancelike states. Buddhists revere this flower as a symbol of purity and victory of spirit over the senses. Romantic poets took the blue flower as an emblem mystical pursuits and unrequited love, while the surrealists debased it to uncover subconscious drives towards kitsch, technology and war. Recent adaptations by figures ranging from David Lynch to Dr. Octagon extend this symbolism into the present.

The works in this exhibition suggest a delirious quest into hidden dimensions of the psyche. Max Hooper Schneider's iridescent human-dolphin grotesques hover in a stress dream of our evolutionary future; Kianja Strobert's electro-luminescent paintings and overgrown mesh petals graft abstraction and figuration into alluring hybrids; Greg Parma Smith's vertiginous pseudodimensional surfaces expand upon subcultural tropes and techniques; Cauleen Smith's Super-8 still-life epistles to canonical painters pose questions about property, patriarchy, and climate catastrophe; Tom Allen's virtuosic renderings of flora and fauna distress uncanny visions of natural phenomena. Other works by Gloria Galvez, Liam Neff, Kelly Akashi, Bill Hayden, Becca Mann, Tiger Tateishi, Curtis Harrington and Mariah Robertson overload the senses with hypertrophied visions of borderline scenarios. Together, these artists draw bold visions of nature and romance mediated by technology and psychic detritus. The blue flower haunts this exhibition as an image of the infinite picked from the polluted banks of the everyday, charting a path towards death, dream and enlightenment.
 

Liam Considine is an art historian and critic. 

Becca Mann is an artist and curator.

Le Maximum is owned by chef and restauranteur Kris Yenbamroong.