SAN MARINO, Calif. — Standing within the gallery of Betye Saar: Drifting Towards Twilight, you might be bathed in cobalt blue gentle. The excitement of neon lights drones within the background. It’s exhausting to say if the temperature has actually dropped, or if it’s psychosomatic, that the environment has cooled your pores and skin simply by the ability of suggestion. You’re drifting in area, or suspended underwater — gravity works in another way 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, an extended 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 — classic fixtures 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 hen 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 fixtures 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 one among her most famed sculptures, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972), which reimagines the “mammy” figurine as empowered and geared up with defensive weaponry.
Saar is a famed Angeleno, a fixture within the metropolis’s artwork scene, however she was raised in Pasadena, mere minutes from this site-specific fee, which went up in 2023 and can stay on view into 2027. Within the quick directed by Kyle Provencio Reingold, the digital camera follows her via the huge grounds of the Huntington, 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 surroundings 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, floating, 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, CA) via November 30, 2027. The exhibition was curated by Yinshi Lerman-Tan and Sola Saar Agustsson.
