Lowe Fehn
Waters of Ours

November 18, 2023 – January 20, 2024

The Valley is pleased to present Waters of Ours, an exhibition of new works on paper by Richmond based artist Lowe Fehn.  Utilizing a personal archive of photographs, dreams, and poetry for reference material, their works are then developed meditatively with a rhythmic and repetitive embedding of soft pastel into paper. Working in diaphanous layers built up over time, the artist enacts an absorption of many parts into one—slowly uniting the image with the substrate itself until they are inseparable. 

In this exhibition, the artist seeks to interface scenes from the natural world with energetic movement, particularly through the depiction of reflections on the surface of water. These swirling, glimmering phenomena point to the boundless and ecstatic union between light and water. Reflections expose the limits of our vision, uniting us with the sacred by reminding us of that which is just beyond our perception. By imbuing the act of depicting reflections with the intention to honor and reconnect to the elemental world, Fehn experiments with how the creation of ceremony allows for the witness of spiritual movement within perceptual experiences. Ceremony, to Fehn, is an intentional practice which enriches experience by opening each moment to awe. Through the framework of ceremonious action/motion/thought, the work of making a visual depiction becomes a means of healing, reflecting, and communicating. 

Tuning into the sensual experience of being in communion with the elemental world is also a way of illuminating the intuitively felt connections shared between living beings. In Fehn’s works, rocky cliffs yield to the sparkling mist, placid ponds and excitable rivers lap against rocks, and water birds glide slowly across the dense plane of a lake. These works ask us to magnify the subtle and powerful union between the seen and unseen forces of our reality. For this lesson, there is no better teacher than water, which demonstrates how to constantly be melting, misting, flowing, how to hold light in your depths, and reflect it back. In Gaston Bachelard’s Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, the philosopher gently urges us to see by means of water. Water calls for a seeing in depth, and also a seeing beyond: “the lake or pool of stagnant water stops us near its bank. It says to our will: you shall go no further; you should go back to looking at distant things, at the beyond.” ❦