Rachel Garrard: Morphic Resonance 

Colector Gallery; hosted by Aldo Chaparo Studio, CDMX

ZONA MACO ART WEEK- April 27th- May 2nd, 2021

The telepathy-type experiences of feeling someone’s stare, of a pet sensing when its owner is coming home, or of those with a phantom limb, the biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake accounts for as “morphic resonance.” He argues that an interweb of energy transference and collective memory is inherent in nature, and all organisms share it. While this theory has been controversial within purely empirical scientific circles, it shares an affinity with research in quantum physics and metaphysical philosophies, which explore forms of reality and consciousness beyond the tangible. In Morphic Resonance, Rachel Garrard continues her long-term inquiry into the nature of manifest reality by using natural elements to expose the slipperiness between the unseen, immaterial world and the sensorially witnessed, material world. As we spend much of our lives in virtual spaces and are increasingly physically disconnected from each other, Garrard proposes a re-attunement with the natural world to remind us of our interconnectivity, especially in unseen ways.

Presented across two sites, the exhibition’s structure embodies an interconnected multiverse of forms. In Mexico City, Garrard will show a video projection of her complex yet intuitive working process and a suite of new paintings. Her paintings, made from natural substances such as quartz and rock powder pigment that she has collected through field research trips, hand-ground, and applied to raw linen through a labor-intensive process of fine layering, show a language of geometric and symbolic forms that are both personal imaginaries as well as loose interpretations of propositions in quantum physics, such as M-theory and supersymmetry. M-theory is a unifying concept for the many string theories that explain the composition of all matter in the universe, which, at the smallest level, appear as a series of strings vibrating at an infinitesimally minute scale. Everything that is material breaks down into the quantum level—as particles, atoms, quarks, strings, and vibrations—what we might believe to be solid and fixed are intangible. Garrard’s assimilation of these theories with experiences in non-physical space that she has accessed through meditation informs the painting compositions. Using natural elements to visualize the unseen structures behind quantum and spiritual phenomena, Garrard grounds her vision of hyperspace within the natural world.

In Monterrey, as part of an ongoing series of natural installations, Garrard will bring ten tons of local river sand into the gallery space to create a site-specific installation. She will sculpt the sand through drawing and carving mounds and depressions that form a vernacular of personal symbols for Garrard. It will also feature a collection of found objects that have been curated in specific relation to one another to visually interpret quantum formulas that refer to one of the eleven higher dimensional spaces of string theory. The sculptural installation operates as a microcosm of the universe—composed of many elements that appear as a unified mass when viewed from a distance but can all be broken down and reshaped over time. The structure is built with the inevitability of decomposition—loosely bound sand as a medium will not last. Nature, time, and chance are Garrard’s collaborators. Across the many works in the exhibition, Garrard taps into personal spiritual knowledge and intuition and scientific research to express metaphysical theories whose principles resonate with the cosmological, all while forefronting nature as a power source for further inquiry.