Illuminations & Illusions

Beatrix Ost

SECOND STREET GALLERY
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

NOVEMBER 1, 2019 – JANUARY 10, 2020

Second Street Gallery is pleased to present Illuminations & Illusions, an exhibition spanning over four decades of Beatrix Ost’s career as a visual artist.

Beatrix Ost’s evocative and dreamlike work has been exhibited all over the world, exploring the nature of time and intimacy, as well as the fragility of the beauty that surrounds us. The multisensory show at Second Street Gallery will include a tightly curated selection of Beatrix’s dark, surrealist-inspired paintings and sculptures, accompanied by a musical score by Abel Okugawa composed specially for the exhibition. There will also be an olfactory element to the exhibition, celebrating fragrance as an artistic medium. Acclaimed internationally as an artist, screenwriter, designer, and style icon, Beatrix's exhibition at Second Street Gallery promises to challenge and delight audiences with her exceptionally personal and irrefutably universal vision.

When Beatrix Ost arrived in New York in 1976, she was already an accomplished artist and actress. Since studying art with Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg and psychology and homeopathy in Munich, she has exhibited internationally: "In Search of the Goddess", "Ten Years of Solitude", "Beauty is Harsh", "Love and Other Obstacles", and "Animal Attraction", to name a few. Beatrix has appeared in leading roles on both stage and screen, beginning with "Protokol einer Heirat"; among her credits as producer and screenwriter are "Hearts’ Lonely Hunters", "Killer Venus" and "White Chocolate". She is the author of short stories and books including "My Father’s House", "More Than Everything", and her most recent, "The Philosopher’s Style". She also designs jewelry for Article 22, which works to fulfill Princess Diana’s wish to eliminate the remains of landmines in war-torn Laos.

In addition to the exhibition catalogue, we offered essential rose oil by Young Living and the exhibition soundtrack composed by Abel Okugawa.

EXHIBITION SPONSOR: IX Art Park

Images courtesy of the arist, Stacey Evans Photography, and Jesùs Pino Photography.

"If your mind is awakened, you know the struggle we wage against an insidious form of helplessness. You pass a majestic tree and you want to bow before the transcendent will which embodies itself in his sophisticated DNA, already tested for its compatibility with the crickets’ song in his leaves, the squirrel hiding in the armpits of his branches, the fruit he feeds the friendly bear passing by.

As a human, you want to bow and assure every species, including our own, that it will be able to continue in its accustomed round. Our children, too. Yes, they should be in school and not fretting about the future.

Let me bow also to that river beneath the bridge, to its fish, its plant life. Let me tread carefully into the grasshopper’s realm, the snake’s kingdom, the bees’ airspace. Let me sing the song of seasons, the glory of the rain, the backbone of the frost. Whatever threatens these things threatens the rose of love.

But our science threatens them, our science which has made us so rich. We are guilty of desecrating them all at the height of our intellectual triumph.

Where are the roses? Our triumphant mind is threatened at its core. We never envisioned the vulnerability we are living today. The idea that it could be too late does not compute, because it forces us out past the ragged edge of silence.

My love is threatened. How could this happen? Indifference slunk in undetected beneath the umbrella of the information age.
I wear the frock of helplessness. Don’t judge my elegance alone. Don’t judge the vulnerability of a flower by its beauty. It is there, and deeply so. It is a reminder, a cloak to cover the struggle, the sadness.

My love is threatened."

- B. Ost