By Annie Lee | May 2026 Official Press Release – Coming soon.
At Bushwick Gallery, Botanic Bodies unfolds as an immersive meditation on nature, transformation, and the emotional resonance embedded within organic form. Bringing together artists working across painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, abstraction, and mixed media, the exhibition explores the shifting relationship between the human body and the natural world through themes of intimacy, memory, ritual, vulnerability, fantasy, and renewal.
On view from May 14 through May 21, 2026, Botanic Bodies features works by Bridget Errante, Sophie McCarthy, Gina Keatley, Koetsu Kakinuma, Audrey Flatt, Emily Smith, Ruby Howell, Lora Robertson, Yael Dresdner, and Aubrey Maurer. Together, the artists create an exhibition that feels lush, atmospheric, and psychologically charged, where flowers become archives, landscapes become emotional terrains, and organic forms carry traces of transformation and human experience.
Throughout the exhibition, nature appears not as passive scenery, but as a living force tied to memory, identity, and emotional evolution. Aubrey Maurer’s ceramic sculpture Ascension transforms salvaged fragments and botanical imagery into a meditation on resilience and reinvention. Audrey Flatt’s Desire Lines dissolves distinctions between figures, animals, and landscape through layered oil pastel compositions filled with movement and color. Ruby Howell’s The Beeches revisits the visual language of landscape painting through instability and fragmentation, allowing the natural environment to become psychologically immersive rather than fixed or idealized.
Themes of intimacy and embodiment emerge powerfully throughout the exhibition. Bridget Errante’s Fleur Noire #1 explores vulnerability, trust, and emotional softness through photography rooted in human connection rather than spectacle. Sophie McCarthy’s Hera blends observation, mythology, and stylized figuration into a bold meditation on femininity and artistic identity. Lora Robertson’s Mother Wolf transforms inherited Catholic symbolism and autobiographical experience into a cinematic feminist self portrait examining ritual, resistance, and personal agency.
Elsewhere, memory and atmosphere become central visual forces. Yael Dresdner’s Float #9 immerses viewers in reflective waters, luminous vegetation, and suspended perspective, creating a landscape that feels meditative and emotionally restorative. Koetsu Kakinuma’s Hamish and Dahlia uses meticulous watercolor layering to construct dreamlike interiors filled with reflection, light, and quiet wonder, drawing inspiration from fantasy imagery and vintage aesthetics. Emily Smith’s Eternal Life revisits ancient Egyptian symbolism through floral imagery inspired by Tutankhamun’s tomb, transforming flowers into reflections on rebirth, preservation, and spiritual continuity.
At the center of the exhibition, Gina Keatley’s large scale diptych Brillare anchors the gallery through atmospheric abstraction and layered material presence. Scraped textures, rain like surfaces, mineral tones, and luminous passages of ochre and black unfold across the canvas like shifting geological formations. The work reflects on erosion, accumulation, and transformation, allowing the painting’s physical history to remain visible within the surface itself.
Guest curated by Vedika Chauhan and Abigail Prakarsa, Botanic Bodies reflects a curatorial vision rooted in material exploration, emotional resonance, and contemporary perspectives on organic form. Both curators bring backgrounds in art history, exhibition planning, artist research, and visual culture, shaping an exhibition that moves fluidly between intimacy and scale, softness and tension, fragility and growth.
Across the exhibition, beauty is never treated as static. Flowers decay, surfaces fracture, bodies merge into landscapes, and memory becomes fluid. The artists in Botanic Bodies embrace transformation not as disruption, but as an essential condition of being alive. Together, the exhibition becomes a study of interconnectedness, revealing how deeply human experience remains tied to cycles of growth, vulnerability, and continual reinvention.
Exhibition Information
Exhibition Title: Botanic Bodies
Theme: Organic elegance, natural forms, and expansive growth
Location: Bushwick Gallery, 22 Fayette Street, Brooklyn, NY
Exhibition Dates: May 14 to May 21, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 14, 6 PM to 8 PM
Private Showings and Events: Invite only throughout the week
Guest Curators: Vedika Chauhan and Abigail Prakarsa
Featured Artists – Botanic Bodies
Aubrey Maurer — In Ascension, ceramic fragments bloom into symbols of resilience and renewal. Soft floral forms rise upward through delicacy and reconstruction, transforming rupture into growth.
Bridget Errante — Fleur Noire #1 and Fleur Noire #2 explores intimacy through vulnerability, tenderness, and trust. Her photography replaces spectacle with emotional honesty, revealing softness as a form of power.
Audrey Flatt — In Desire Lines, figures, animals, and landscapes dissolve into swirling layers of color and gesture. The work blurs the boundary between body and environment through instinctive abstraction.
Ruby Howell — The Beeches transforms landscape into psychological terrain. Fragmented textures and shifting forms create a world suspended between beauty, instability, and becoming.
Yael Dresdner — In Float #9, reflections, dark waters, and luminous vegetation merge into a meditative atmosphere where nature becomes memory, refuge, and emotional restoration.
Sophie McCarthy — Hera reimagines divine femininity through bold color, stylized figuration, and painterly experimentation. Observation and mythology intertwine within a work that feels theatrical and deeply personal.
Lora Robertson — Mother Wolf reconstructs ritual, faith, and inherited symbolism through cinematic self portraiture. Lace, light, and shadow become instruments of resistance and reclamation.
Emily Smith — In Eternal Life, floral imagery inspired by Tutankhamun’s tomb becomes a meditation on rebirth, preservation, and the enduring spiritual symbolism carried through history.
Koetsu Kakinuma — Hamish and Dahlia captures dreamlike stillness through luminous watercolor and layered reflection. Vintage interiors and imagined worlds merge into quiet moments of wonder and escape.
Gina Keatley — In Brillare, scraped textures, mineral tones, and luminous ochre unfold across atmospheric abstraction. The diptych transforms erosion, accumulation, and transformation into a study of movement and renewal.