Murmurs proudly presents EARTHSHINE, Dylan DeRose’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, where the artist unveils -Fields, a new body of work that reveals the hidden landscapes of our digital world.
Stretching faraday fabric much like canvas, DeRose creates surfaces that partially block electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which he then patinas, tracing invisible magnetic currents until they become legible to the human eye. What emerges are striking, abstract vistas that evoke otherworldly terrains. Swirling clouds of reflective silver spiral into a painting’s center, while textured, starry bursts—the metallic coloring of the original fabric—emerge from green oxidized imprints. These “paintings” give energetic forces a visual afterlife; each work reveals the hypnotic remnants of electromagnetic-dependent networks—WiFi, 5G, GPS—that shape our daily lives, now traced across the tablet-like plaques endemic to DeRose’s practice.
-Fields blurs the line between spiritual quest and conspiratorial fantasy. The currents that compose each painting are often sources of paranoia: a tinfoil hat, for example, is one version of a faraday cage. But the circular, abstract patterns of these compositions more closely resemble those of radial mandalas than they do conspiratorial ephemera. In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, mandala offerings, which can be woven, painted, or made from sand, represent an enlightened view of the universe that may be obscured to a new practitioner. Likewise, in -Fields, the works’ reflective fabric can appear temporarily blinding, compelling viewers to reckon with their surroundings in new ways.
In processes that reference the generative art of Sol LeWitt or John Cage, DeRose explores the interactions between highly controlled built environments and unpredictable natural phenomena. In his Los Angeles studio, DeRose cultivates a colony of worms that eat earthy, mazelike pathways through custom blocks. These nonhuman creatures supplant the traditional role of the artist, forming sculptures all their own. The artist’s hand, in -Fields, is magnetic current: a spatial force that creates ethereal labyrinths on oceanic dunes and far-away planets. Here, challenges to conventional artistic production result in alien discoveries, uncovering worlds just out of reach.