Density of the Spell, a solo exhibition at New York’s SLAG&RX by Warsaw-based artist Edyta Hul, is the artist’s first in the U.S. Hul’s process involves combining oil paint with various industrial enamels, preceded and followed by many layers of primer and varnish to achieve hypnotically diaphanous results. To where one travels upon viewing, however, barring shifts in color schemes (evoking hyper-real nature, mostly) and complexity of composition, is entirely up to the individual beholder. Light and rich, fierce and supplicant; resistance is pleasantly futile.
Into Surrealist Garden
Xilitla is a magical little municipality in the San Luis Potosi state in the heart of Mexico. It’s best known amongst clued-in dreamers, seasoned travelers and bohemian artists for its fantastically lush, subtropical rainforest 200 miles above sea-level, which symbiotically engulfs the Edward James Las Pozas Surrealist Garden, a transcendent attraction so named for its numerous “pools,” which are actually diverse, natural bodies of water (hot springs, streams and lakes) which populate the enchanted natural wonderland. The eponymous, sensitive and mercurial Edward James began planting seemingly other-worldly orchids and barely-earthly delights in the Huasteca Potosina (named for the region’s Indigenous) in the early ‘60s, almost 20 years after first scouting the 40-hectare Mexi-Eden after fleeing Europe’s devastated landscape on the heels of World War 2. James, a well-to-do British artist and poet, inherited vast sums from his railroad magnate father. Besides funding his Surrealist Garden halfway across the world, this gargantuan inheritance allowed James to serve as a worthy patron to Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, and René Magritte, for whom he often posed as a model or subject (see: Not to Be Reproduced and The Pleasure Principle, both 1937 portraits of James by Magritte). The influence of these artists and their work can be seen and deeply felt in-situ at Las Pozas, which features over 36 surrealist architectural marvels including an outdoor gallery, a winding “stairway to heaven” exposed to the elements, a so-called “terrace of the tigers,” and other confounding structures. At Xilitla, “man,” nature and reality itself dissolve. This is just one word, place, vibe or concept made potently manifest by one painting, one puissant portal by Edyta Hul; Serpentine Sisters, 2024, rendered seductively in a suspiring green chaparral of oil and enamel on canvas.
Navigating the Otherworldly
Primed many times over to create what could be called a lucid base, the medium becomes an amalgamated dreamer, free to explore, to bleed, to discover its own fate, perhaps with a divine push or pull. Much will be evoked, like the aforementioned Xilitla, to taxonomize or geo-allocate the content at play, much like the artist, who, yes, hails from Poland. But what is this nationalistic factoid to sentient, alien, bioluminescent seaweed colonies in the liquid ethane lakes of Titan? A painting, a physical object of some degree of permanence, at least in (im)mortal intention, does the sleek and silent work; a transportive dream synesthesia; a passport to a new dimension or to new, exotic planets dashed with shared terrestrial DNA. Hul’s preternatural landscapes, radiating with organic, multiversal emotions, exist within and beyond our grasp simultaneously.
Boundless Perception
Do toucans dream? Apparently so! What if Ukraine’s wheat fields were left to their own devices, growing, climbing and unfurling like a revolutionary’s defiantly uncut mane? What if H.R. Giger’s soul dreamt of howling Birds of Paradise while napping in Papua New Guinea? Recall an intoxicated, romantic tumble up winding back-alley steps in Chefchaouen, the “Blue City” of Morocco. Edyta Hul’s work in Density of the Spell compels us to commune with something beyond our current catalogue of experience, something deeper than the earth-bound flesh could comprehend or facilitate, while never divorcing us from a radical sense of universal aliveness.
written by Kurt McVey
Edyta Hul (1986, Dobre Miasto) Visual artist based in Warsaw. Graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (2012). Winner of the Grand Prix (ex aequo) of the 46th Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień 2023. Holder of a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2020), participant in the Artist-in-Residence Q21 programme at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna (2019). Her paintings invoke the shapes of nature while gravitating towards abstraction. By combining artistic oil paints with industrial enamels, the artist achieves an intriguing effect of visual depth, density. Her source of inspiration is the creative process. The artist is represented by Warsaw’s Piękna Gallery.
DENSITY OF THE SPELL. EDYTA HUL
January 11 – February 8, 2025
SLAG&RX, 522 West 19th street, NY, NY 10011
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 AM – 1 PM and 2- 6 PM