Universal Solvent
“But memory is mercurial, shapeshifting over time and slipping through the sieve of one’s mind like quicksilver. Quicksilver—an element that transcends solid and liquid states, a metaphor for the fluidity between the realms of heaven and earth, life and death…”
Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe’s words above (used to describe painter Ali Banisadr’s work) offer an appropriately slick and slippery entry point into Universal Solvent, an exhibition featuring works by Georgia Hourdas, Marisha Lozada, and Fanni Somogyi – finalists in the 2025 Annual Open Call exhibition. The show brings together materially and conceptually diverse approaches to growth, entropy, and metamorphosis. Mysterious, symbol-laden paintings shift through high-key color to muted neutrals, and sculptural works flicker between recognizable utility and organic, living matter – a network of dissolve and resolidification speaking to transformation, fluidity, and changeability.
In Hourdas’ paintings, one encounters specific flora and species entwined with imagery of swirling star clusters. We are naturally inclined to name the recognizable forms, but in looking more closely at the delineated shapes, we encounter taxonomies that collapse under scrutiny, giving way to portals of mythic vastness. A wide spectrum of lifespans and their respective temporalities is present—a dew drop, a shiver of sharks, seemingly endless galaxies. This fluctuation between micro and macro, classification and dream, unsettles our gaze and reveals the pattern-seeking psyche at work.
According to Robert Gober, “memory is like looking up at the stars.” Some are clear and bright, and some a bit hazy or unseen. Lozada’s mixed media paintings utilize fragments from a personal symbolic system to construct works that speak to adolescence and identity. Combining Eastern Orthodox iconography with illustrations reminiscent of middle school notebook doodles, the layered motifs become highly emotional amidst deliberate and striking use of color—flashlight-like washes of sunny yellow, all-over matte black flatness, and bright, arsenic greens. Icons of devotion and self-fashioning share the same pictorial ground, inviting reverence, irreverence, and reinterpretation.
Somogyi’s work, fantastical in its own right, bridges organic and industrial logic. The recognition of copper piping helps us locate ourselves in familiarity while simultaneously presenting unexpected, nearly fungal mutations. The process of electroforming copper takes the piece through distinct stages, utilizing both decay and accumulation to build each form—an echo of how bodies heal, scar, and change shape. The material’s bruised surfaces, tinged with heat-patina pinks and purples, underscore the sensual vulnerability of the work. Like infrastructure infected with memory, the sculptures suggest both support systems and sites of rupture.
The artists in Universal Solvent present snapshots of slippage—from earthside to the cosmos, from the intimate body to sprawling infrastructure. Their works offer fractured cosmologies, where classification, memory, and matter blur—each piece a trace of something shifting, unfixed, and alive.
The Artists:
Georgia Hourdas
www.georgiahourdas.com
Marisha Lozada
www.marishalozada.com
Fanni Somogyi
www.fannisomogyi.com