October 11-November 30

Tyte Gallery, 3280 FRANKLIN AVE., 2ND FLOOR, MILLBROOK

“Notes toward a Supreme Vision”

by Lilly Wei is a New York-based critic, writer, journalist and independent curator whose primary interest is global contemporary art. She is a longtime contributor to The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America and a contributing editor at ARTnews.

October, 2024

The twenty-one remarkable paintings in Bonnie Kozek’s exhibition “Timeless” were mostly conceived during the past four years, from the onset of the pandemic to the present, from the closing up of the world to its re-opening. There are also a trio of earlier works, among them Beloved, in Silver (2015), from the “Aftermath” series. The four-foot square canvas is neatly patterned by a grid of small squares, each painstakingly embossed by hand with one of the seven letters that spell “beloved,” repeated over and over. Weighted with implications, the word can be read variously as a noun (beloved), verb (be loved; be; loved), and as an imperative ([you] be loved). The surface is bewitchingly satiny, burnished by a triple wash of glimmering silver blue paint; she favors light-capturing, light-reflecting material. These three earlier works give the present project context as a genealogy of her artistic development, as her vision digs deeper, stretches higher and wider, becoming increasingly nuanced, increasingly encompassing. 

Kozek has long been interested in esoteric and mystical doctrines, in philosophical and spiritual systems of belief as a different vantage point from which to consider reality and recenter it. From Pythagorean numerology to Gematria to Theosophy, Buddhism, and Hinduism, to the lure of Symbolism and Surrealism and other ideologies across cultures, sometimes mainstream but often not, she absorbs and alchemizes a multiplicity of world views into something profoundly personal.  And she is not alone in her rummaging through alternative interpretations of what we perceive as reality, from metaverses to myths to magic. Given the troubled and chaotic state of our planet today and our insanely heedless devastation and depletion of its natural resources, it is no wonder that so many of us, especially post-millennial generations, have plumbed fantasy, sci-fi, the occult and other genres of the speculative for more humane, compassionate modes of existence, including those submerged in our collective memories. Kozek is intent on unearthing and restoring what has vanished as a way to shape a more spiritual, more mindful habitat. 

As if one stream isn’t enough to contain the rapturous flow of her prodigious imagination, she works in series, several at a time. The newest ventures are from her “Macrocosmos” series, its theme defined (more or less) as the expression of everything, everywhere, all at once. Timeless (2024), the work that gives its name to the exhibition and its primary theme, is from this grouping and consists of two perfectly round discs in proximity to each other, related but not attached. One circle is much smaller, as if it were the offspring—or a satellite—of the bigger. Made from countless blazingly red, irresistibly soft marabou feathers as well as a host of other sparkly materials against a rose-gold washed ground, they are a lighthearted and concise image of cycles, of generation, of worlds without end. Five delicate ladders are fabricated from twigs and twine as if for woodland fairies—or Angelic Messengers, as Kozek has dubbed her sprites—in a piece called Free Born (c. 2023), also from this series, the ladder a frequent image in her work, emblematic of ascension, aspiration, and the curiosity, and tenacity to purposefully, courageously climb toward the unknown.

“Hypogeal Deciphering” is another recent series. Hypogeal (I had to look it up) means “underground,” from the ancient Greek for “under” and “earth,” referring to the complexities of subterranean activity. In the four works on view from this series, Kozek imagines what lies beneath, offering the viewer glimpses of what is usually invisible, which she excavates and reveals, a version of landscape art, perhaps, that is also an emoscape, a mindscape. The materials for this group include sand, ground stone, and graphite as well as pigments and paint, all appropriately tellurian, her materials characteristically as wide-ranging as her subjects. Her titles often make me smile; I love the image that Honey-Drunk Bees (on a West Stone Pathway to Wonderland Garden (2023) summons up, say, or Paw Prints (on Wet Stone Pathway to Wonderland Garden (2023. They are matter of fact and yet poetic and to be honey-drunk, I am now convinced, must be an exalted and very unique state of bliss. 

This series also illustrates her use of ciphers. It is a device that she uses with some regularity in the telling of her stories in which thoughts are encoded that spell out relevant words when deciphered. In Speak. Memory. No. 1 and Speak. Memory. No. 2, titled in homage to Vladimir Nabokov’s classic memoir, those two words are repeated in the golden Dancing Woman ciphers that extend like a frieze across the painting, as well as in two other works present here: Plato Babies (2024, part of the “Chronicles” series) and Free (2023, part of “Macrocosmos” series.  

Then there is Kozek’s “Liminal Interludes,” the two paintings from that series on view are Tantra Song (2021) and Flutterby’s Uprising (2023). The theme in this sequence is based on transitions, on in-between stages such as the moment of waking before awareness asserts itself. The exquisitely gossamer ladders in Flutterby’s Uprising are made of milkweed seeds and silk placed against a tremulous, sweetly melancholic blue that is the darkening color of the sky at the violet hour. They are another instance of that ancient symbol of triumphant ascent that is achieved step by upward step to reach the next level, the number of rungs also symbolically calculated. 

“Imaginal Realms” is linked to “Liminal Interludes” and is also set apart from the rational world of our quotidian existence. Cynthia Bourgeault, who writes about mysticism, coined the term, describing it as a boundary realm between two worlds, two realities, each with its own laws, its own causalities. It is a place for active exchange and is represented here by Once Upon a Time (2018), a phrase that remains magical to me, evoking childhood and the enchanted kingdoms of fairy tales, of quests and tests and the good beset by evil but ultimately conquering it, of the purity and power of love: an age of innocence, a golden age. 

“Chronicles” is another earlier series, its theme that of linguistic exchange, of documentation, and represented here by three paintings. Tamil (2020) focuses on a language spoken by around 62 million people at the beginning of this century in south Asia. Tamil itself one of the two oldest surviving classical languages in India, the first evidence of its use recorded in the fifth century BC. Written in gold, the script raised, Kozek’s text in Tamil exhorts us to “Remember. Do Not Forget,” to tell our stories and those of others. Its longevity is a provocative contrast to all those tongues that have been lost or are no longer comprehensible, and with them the narratives of entire civilizations and cultures. 

Kozek explains that “639 Hz Elixir” is a series that refers to a particular frequency (measured in Hertz ((Hz). It is purported to produce positive energy, openness, harmony, feelings of love and of deep serenity. It elicits intercommunication and tolerance—in short, what constitutes positive relationships. The three paintings in this category visualize that energy by means of pictorial fields completely covered with rows of horizontal bands, the bands populated by wavering shapes. The emphasis is on their oscillations, their varied staccato rhythms, pictures of reverberant force fields that emit a sense of buoyancy, uplift, volatility, vitality—a rendering of the music of the spheres. 

Hers is a practice that requires long hours of intense concentration, the repetitive gestures of her process a ritual that induces a state of enthrallment and meditation centered on revelation and healing. Kozek seeks heightened levels of consciousness and the recovery of buried memories. It is a search for grace, beauty, and empathy through other worlds and parallel universes as Kozek threads together past, present and future. From the infinitely tiny to the incomprehensibly cosmic, everything is connected, she believes.