Dallas-based conceptual painter Liz Trosper loves “jamming incompatible ideas together.” Her latest work, Dandelion and Rose, does just that.
On view at Barry Whistler Gallery through Sept. 25, the 34-foot, site-specific vinyl installation reminds me of a psychedelic picnic or border crossing. The rhythm and glitch of the green and orange colors marching through the walls mesh with increasingly warped and distorted photographs of dandelions and roses that Trosper took herself.
There are multiple borders being crossed or perhaps melted in this piece. The borders between the human and natural world, between traditional values of beauty and among photography, printmaking and painting. “I like how printing is disrespectful to painting, but I love it because I am a painter,” Trosper says.
The artist also empathizes with the non-human world, and was influenced by Michael Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire, which looks at how human desires are reflected in the ways we breed and cultivate plants. By finding power in the unexamined, Trosper has created a piece that contains multitudes.
