Animate Ground: New Works Rooted in Material and Intuition

Gallery Bogart is pleased to present Animate Ground, a group exhibition that explores the generative potential of the material world. The six featured artists proceed from a shared intuition: that matter is not passive, but is instead an active, living entity. Their work is a testament to a creative process rooted in negotiation—a dialogue between artistic intent and the inherent properties of their chosen materials, such as pigment and clay. For them, the ‘ground’ itself is animate, whether it refers to the literal earth, the pictorial surface of a canvas, or the foundation of a memory.

This inquiry unfolds across a diverse range of forms. In painting and drawing, figuration is used to question the integrity of the autonomous self; human, animal, and botanical forms dissolve into their environments, their boundaries rendered permeable. In sculpture, a biomorphic logic prevails, with works that evoke the natural processes of growth, accumulation, and decay. Throughout, there is a sense of shared, instinctual kinship between all forms, suggesting a world where every element is part of a larger, sentient whole.

Animate Ground offers a mode of looking that is both elemental and deeply contemporary. It invites the viewer to move beyond purely optical analysis and engage with art on an intuitive, sensory level. It is an exhibition that values the felt over the seen, finding profound meaning in the quiet but persistent forces that animate our world.