The Handwerker Gallery is pleased to share works by Dara Engler and Lydia Panas, two artists who have spent extensive time looking inward for answers. These solo shows explore anxieties, identities, and states of being through a range photography, video, and mixed media strategies. Both shows open Thursday, January 26th, and will feature an opening reception from 5 – 6:30 p.m..
Dara Engler's You Can Never Go Home is an exploration of past places and current worry. The rate of change has increased rapidly in our world. We all imagined our futures and now those futures seem so much more unpredictable. These pieces escape to the past – exploring memory wandering illogically through childhood homes and old apartments, focusing on vignettes of objects and moments of significance. As the past gets further away, we can no longer keep a foot in both the past and present. We expected to return to “normal” after the pandemic, but upheaval is the new normal. This homage to prior safe spaces is a step toward letting go, confronting anxiety, and being present.
Lydia Panas is a visual artist working with photography and video. A first-generation American, she was raised between Greece and the United States. Through a combination of psychoanalysis and feminism, her work looks at identity and what lies below the surface, investigating questions of who we are and what we want to become. Exploring the roles of power and trust on both sides of the camera, she describes what it feels like to be a woman, a human, and the complex range of emotions we have the capacity to feel. All her work is made in the fields, the forests, and the studio of her seventy-acre farm in Pennsylvania. The connection she feels to this land and her family is the foundation of her work.
Both artists will offer public artist talks in the gallery on February 16th at 6pm [Lydia Panas] and March 2 at 6pm [Dara Engler]. These exhibitions and talks are free and open to the public and continue through March 8, 2023.