Welancora Gallery is proud to present Seen and Unseen, an intergenerational pairing of new paintings by Chris Watts (b. 1984) and bronze sculpture created by Helen Evans Ramsaran (b.1943), at Frieze Los Angeles, 2023 booth E04.

Seen and Unseen is a presentation of work by Chris Watts and Helen Evans Ramsaran that builds on their interest in exploring the precarity of representation, of the Black body and indigenous cultures, through the formal engagement of abstract painting and bronze sculpture where absence forms the condition of visibility.

Thinking about historical categorizations of human-ness, and emancipating notions of Blackness and spirituality from the Western imagination, Watts employs soft and sheer textiles, resin, pigments, and poly-chiffon silk, to capture the aura of the Black body. Monochromatic colors in the work, saturated into fleshy transparent surfaces bring forth an embodied vulnerability. Porous and breathable, light decelerates as it passes through the material allowing for a slow-looking or meditative experience. The act of disappearance, the non-locatable subject, and the quiet world created inside these paintings begs the question: how can we begin to define ourselves in a way that is both radical and responsive to lived experiences rather than a priori qualifications of the self?

Working in bronze, Ramsaran combines a subtle palette with abstract, angular lines and etched surfaces that investigate the idea of the shrine. Assimilating her experiences in Africa, China, and Mexico into these visions, the artist has rendered her own concept of a sanctuary or site of worship.  While the shrines are not intended to be specifically architectonic in nature, there is a sense of enclosure and shelter in each work. Ramsaran suggests the external/physical and the internal/metaphysical function of the shrine, indicating an actual space in which one enters, and an area inside that is meant for reflection and refuge. Often, an abstract ornamentation functions together with the formal structure of the work to reiterate the artist’s interest in the initiation ceremonies and the symbols found in the art that accompanies these events.