SAN MARINO, Calif. — Standing within the gallery of Betye Saar: Drifting Towards Twilight, you might be bathed in oceanic, cobalt blue gentle. The thrill of neon lights drones within the background. It’s arduous to say if the temperature has really dropped, or if it’s psychosomatic, that the environment has cooled your pores and skin simply by the facility of suggestion. You’re floating in house, or suspended underwater — gravity works otherwise right here.
The phases of the moon are painted on the wall in a matte metallic silver, and a small poem by Saar is draped throughout the wall: “The moon keeps vigil as a lone canoe drifts into a sea of tranquility seeking serenity in the twilight.” In the course of the room, a protracted canoe, 17 toes throughout, sits atop a mattress of branches, bramble, and sheets of jagged wooden. At both tip of the ship is a watchful eye guiding the raft in each instructions. Two sentinels — antiques affixed with antlers — preserve watch at every finish. Saar has crafted a fantastical scene; you possibly can envision the boat careening upriver, striding forth.
The vessel is occupied by chook cages confining animal antlers and seated upon miniature chairs match just for a toddler — or, maybe, spirits who scarcely want a bodily seat, simply an invite to relaxation. These scavenged objects are attribute of Saar’s discovered object assemblage; she hunts for her supplies, whether or not in nature or at flea markets.
Set up view of Betye Saar, “Drifting Toward Twilight” (2023)
“I like combining manufactured objects with natural objects,” says the 98-year-old artist in a video behind the gallery. She began accumulating at 4 or 5, she explains, however the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was a catalyzing second. She was so overwhelmed with emotion that she might do nothing however create artwork, main her to assemble considered one of her most famed sculptures, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972), which empowers and equips a “mammy” figurine with defensive weaponry.
Saar is a famed Angeleno, a fixture within the metropolis’s artwork scene, however she was raised in Pasadena, which neighbors the Huntington Gardens, the place this site-specific fee went up in 2023. Within the brief directed by Kyle Provencio Reingold, the digicam follows her via the large campus, the place she first wandered at 12 or 13 alongside her mom and neighbor. We forage the gardens along with her as she instructs the Huntington staff of her creative intentions; you possibly can hear the giddiness in her voice as she remembers her childhood traversing its grounds, choosing fallen branches and trimmings. “Even in death, those things can be really beautiful,” she muses.
The gallery lighting shifts from daylight to nightfall as time creeps alongside. Drifting Into Twilight is an encapsulated, self-sustaining atmosphere of its personal, like a show exhibit at a pure historical past museum with a surrealistic twist. The room is as enjoyable as it’s disorienting; it feels such as you’ve been plunged right into a misty and peculiar different world. You’re sinking, descending, drifting into twilight.
Set up view of Betye Saar, “Drifting Toward Twilight” (2023)
Betye Saar: Drifting Towards Twilight continues at Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Artwork on the Huntington (1151 Oxford Street, San Marino, California) via November 30, 2027. The exhibition was curated by Yinshi Lerman-Tan and Sola Saar Agustsson.
