Derek Eller exhibits three new monumental sculptures by Michelle Segre Michelle Segre - Derek Eller From 28 April to 28 May 2022, Derek Eller Gallery presents "Michelle Segre: Night Chorus", an exhibition of three recent monumental sculptures by artist Michelle Segre. Source: Derek Eller · Image © Michelle Segre, via derekeller.com The three sculptures featured in the exhibition, created from wire, yarn, canvas, acrylic, and an array of organic materials, are the result of two years of work by Michelle Segre (Tel Aviv, 1965), in which the artist has sought inspiration from both the observation of the night sky and science fiction. In a press release, the gallery explains: "Executed over a two-year period in both the Bronx and rural Massachusetts, the sinewy, vibrant sculptures achieve vastness and scale with minimal means. Elliptical loops of wire are the main armature on which Segre creates an eye-like center for each work, methodically stretching and weaving the yarn to voluminous proportions from the center outward. The results are a kind of interplanetary trio of celestial bodies that pulse and radiate into the space around them.  The night skies of western Mass were a strong influence on the direction of these works. ‘There was one night in particular where I lay in the field below a completely clear sky and witnessed a spectacular star display that felt like a visitation of some kind,’ writes Segre. ‘This experience and the whole lead-up from the pandemic confinement in New York is distilled into ‘Eight Body Chorus’…the piece is like a message from space arriving during a time of what still feels like a societal and planetary collapse.’ The work’s title references the science fiction novel ‘The Three-Body Problem’ by Cixin Liu, in which earthlings communicate with aliens via a radio transmitter." Another source of inspiration, the gallery explains, is Peter Wohlleben's 'The Hidden Life of Trees', "which posits a forest community in which trees share information through an underground network of roots, contributes to the iconography embedded within Segre’s sculptures.  Dried mushrooms suspended within ‘Eight Body Chorus’ central perimeter evoke mycelium, the root-like fungal formations interspersed throughout the trees’ network. At the same time, Segre’s epic work, ‘I Talk to the Trees’, features a yellow sunburst framed within an intricate weaving of wood grain patterns."

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