In a second, the faintest perfume may send us plummeting to the roots of our being, our whole life verticalized by a fleeting sensation… the amount we have changed in the recognition of this moment – this is the spiral.

- Jill Purce, The Mystic Spiral

It is often in physical and spatial terms that we address memories – whether it is how we “sift” through them, “rack” our brain, or feel the trace of a word “on the tip of the tongue.” If a memory can escape us, where does it go? 

“The Forgetting Curve” is a three person exhibition of new works by Elana Bowsher, Nik Gelormino and Erna Mist that explores the notion of memory architecture, the structure and space in which memories take shape and fall apart. An aide memoire or a visual mnemonic, each artwork returns to the helical form, an age-old symbol for cycles, recollections, and the generative shape of spacetime.

Elana Bowsher, an LA based artist whose paintings explore the tension between the privacy and perception of the female body, deviates from previously figurative paintings to a new series of anatomical abstractions. Inspired by the symbolic language of artists Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’ Keeffe, Bowsher’s luminescent formations of sinew and bone appear to twist through a primordial sea of exploded cells and molecules. A corporeal map, Bowsher’s work is also suggestive of more ancient symbols of healing and fertility, where the curve and spiral are part of a feminine domain of cycles, hopes, and desires.

Organic matter is at the core of LA based artist Nik Gelormino’s practice. In a similar spirit to JB Blunk, HC Westermann, and Les Lalannes, Gelormino’s work walks a fine line between sculptural, semi-functional and surrealistic furniture. For his newest series of solid wood works, Gelormino focuses on natural forms that emanate from an entropic center. Hand carved from felled redwood, cedar, and Douglas fir, Gelormino’s materials are transformed into stools through a meditative process of carving and chiseling the shape of blooming flowers and seashells. A heavyweight coffee table – with curvaceous legs and two concave bowl-like eyes on its smooth surface – conjures the infinite undulations of an ouroboros. Much like the natural rings of a tree trunk, Gelormino’s recurrent spiral motif represents the passage of time and growth.

Exploring a metaphysical world, London based Icelandic artist Erna Mist paints from personal memories and dreams that shape an expansive space for the subconscious. Echoing the landscapes of surrealist painters like Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, and Stella Snead, Mist’s paintings often include deep blue mazes, swirling black holes, and figures that seem to navigate a nonlinear point in time. Mist renders memories much like physicist J.A. Wheeler described the vortical geometry of space: “the writhing surface of the ocean in a storm.” The curved corridors, rooms, hourglasses and abstractions in Mist’s works suggest a controlled chaos, much like the labyrinth itself.

The spiral is recurrent in history, nature, the body, and the way we travel around life. It is the cycle in which we collect memories and experiences. It is what we have to compare ourselves with ourselves, and where we discover how much we have changed since the last time we found ourselves here. With each returning season, each holiday gathering, each ritual, we review the progress and growth of our own understanding.