Noumenal Disquiet by Gabriel Sellers on view in TASI pop-up
By Julia Rodriguez
“Madness is the method” – Lauren E. Simonutti, American photographer, (1968–2012).
Before her passing, Simonutti imparted this piece of wisdom to Gabriel Sellers during a conversation they had about process. Sellars, normally a very meticulous artist, has continually come back to that phrase while completing Noumenal Disquiet that opens June 2021, and can be RSVP’d to here.
The inspiration behind the work is a chaotic web of his studies of the brain as a double major in biology and psychology with an emphasis in neuroscience; his experiences with the mental health system and patients as an EMT; and the consumption of esoteric philosophers. The fundamental question of the show is does psychiatry work? Can we ever really understand or trust what we experience? Sellers has been delving into the subject of mental health in his work since 2010 and sees this show as the conclusion of a decade’s worth of exploration.
The few black and white photos he showed me on his phone had a certain gloominess enhanced by the lack of color and deepened by the rich contrast. But had we not had a conversation about psychiatry, I would have thought of ghosts and the paranormal. He shrugs. “There’s no difference. Other worldly things or things in our head, we don’t really know what they are.” The images are neither scary nor disturbing in a pop horror way, but instead evokes a slow unnerving creep of a deep instinctual truth, like when you’ve secretly suspected something and are about to be proven right even though you wished you weren’t.
Like the phenomenon that exists on the periferie of our world, real or imagined, the drive for the artist to create is unexplainable. Whatever the madness or the method, Sellers’ work demands to not go unanswered or unseen.
Patrons are invited to view the exhibition in person during Gallery hours and virtually on TASI’s social media:
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