Tripoli Gallery in Wainscott presents “The Side Door to Glory and Oblivion,” its 19th Annual Thanksgiving Collective. The show opens with a reception on Saturday, November 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. and runs through February 26.
This year, the exhibition takes a cue from a quote that the late artist Ashley Bickerton stated in a conversation for The Surfer’s Journal in 2022. The artist, who died that same year from ALS was highly aware of his own mortality and generously shared about his musings on death. Artists who have been selected for this ambitious exhibition, conceptually honor the passing from one realm to another whether spiritual, emotional, physical, or psychological. The Thanksgiving Collective is an honored tradition that kicks off the holiday seasons including the transition from one calendar year to the next.
Gallery founder Tripoli Patterson met Bickerton as a teenager and said, “In this year’s 19th Annual Thanksgiving Collective, we look inward as we search for the purpose to embark on another day, another year, another lifetime. We learn that the pace in which we exist does not ultimately change the duration of that existence. We reflect on the artists and great thinkers of the past while engaging with them in the present.”
It is in this way that artists have been brought into the Thanksgiving Collective, a space of gratitude and reflection most needed in a time when so many are experiencing heartbreak and lack. Artists include Katherine Bernhardt, Mark Cora-Mooroom Bungaree, Otis Hope Carey, Sue Carlson, Sally Egbert, Sabra Moon Elliot, Connie Fox, Félix Bonilla Gerena, Mary Heilmann, Judith Hudson, Bryan Hunt, Lee Jaffe, Yung Jake, Benjamin Keating, Laith McGregor, Angelbert Metoyer, Miles Partington, Esther Ruiz, Lauren West, Jerry Wilkerson, and Lucy Winton. The exhibition seeks to filter and flutter between realities, an aesthetic dance, a visual poem, and a eulogy for the living.
Tripoli Gallery is at 26 Ardsley Road in Wainscott. Visit tripoligallery.com for details.
Staff Writer on Nov 19, 2023