Lyndi Sales — Lumière préternaturelle — Maria Lund Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 10 → June 21, 2014

“ I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers — back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance ”¹

Realities and perception are at the heart of Lyndi Sales’ work. The artist questions our capacity and our desire to look and see. An aspiration of a utopic order adds to these physiological and psychological questionings. Fascinated by science and esotericism, the artist transforms personal experiences and social phenomena into a universal artistic reflection. Thus, the loss of a dear one leads her to explore fragility and chance, while a visual disability brings her to the study of vision. As concrete as the starting point of her work can be, Lyndi Sales searches for metaphor and symbolism. Her work is animated by a profound curiosity about the human being, the meaning of existence and Man’s transcendental need — topics she approaches in a jubilatory manner.

Praeternaturallight

The works that Lyndi Sales is presenting at the galerie Maria Lund take the shape of sophisticated laser cutouts, on paper and on Plexiglas. They are inspired by reflections on perception, as expressed by Aldous Huxley in The doors of perception. The title of the book itself is a reference to a quote by William Blake: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to an as it is, infinite². Here one finds again Lyndi Sales’ fascination for unsettling analogies between the infinitely big and the infinitely small. Thus, in the networks of graphic shapes that the artist cuts, the viewer loses all notions of scale and logic. The paper and color collages multiply the senses, the meanings, while the semi-transparent iridescent and shiny Perspex surfaces — a type of Plexiglas — suggest a multitude of parallel universes that reflect, influence and respond to each other. The works are references to spiritual symbols such as the Vesica piscis — two circles that cross each other, a metaphor of union, conception, the passage between life and death and the transition from the physical to the spiritual — but also to scientific interrogation about the dark matter or the earth’s magnetic field. Starting from established models and signs, Lyndi Sales suggests transcendence, an enlarged reality, an echo of the title of the exhibition Praeternatural Light³ meaning an other light, beyond the natural.

¹ Aldous Huxley, The doors of perception, 1954

² William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 — 1793

³ Aldous Huxley uses in his essay of psychedelic drugs, Heaven and Hell, the term “preaternatural light”- to qualify visionary landscapes, described by enlightened poets and amateurs of mystical experiences in occidental art and Buddhist philosophy, Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell, 1956

Other events

From May 23rd to September 6th, Lyndi Sales’ installation Audience is presented at the Bon Marché Rive Gauche in the context of the program L’Entrée sur l’Art Contemporain (The Entrance to Contemporary Art) in collaboration with Slick Art Fair. The installation — a large eye suspended made of a multitude of irises, of looks — is part of the artist’s reflection on perception. L’Entrée sur l’Art Contemporain, 1st floor Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche 24 rue de Sèvres Paris 7th arr. Magazine Le Bon Marché