In the galleries: The art of looking inward to provoke societal change
By Mark Jenkins
Irene Pantelis
“The copiapoa cactuses that grow in Chile’s Atacama, Earth’s driest nonpolar desert, are both hardy and delicate. The starkly lovely drawings in “Cactus of the Sands,” Irene Pantelis’s Studio Gallery show, emphasize the delicacy. This expresses the precarious existence of vegetation that finds “sustenance in just fog and sunlight,” according to the local artist’s statement. It also hints at the environmental threats to the flowering cactuses, which are imperiled by poaching, lithium mining and climate change.
Envueltito/Ancient Copiapoa Surrounded by Produce Bag by Irene Pantelis
The drawings verge on abstraction, yet are clearly derived from nature. Most were executed with black ink on paper whose low absorbency allowed the pigment to pool and occasionally separate, yielding subtle gradations in color. A few of the pictures are highlighted with brown colored pencil, bits of mesh and, in one case, acrylic paint. That blue-accented picture represents a satellite view of remaining cactus mounds, but Pantelis produces just as an expansive view of nature by focusing on a single plant.”
Irene Pantelis: Cactus of the Sands Through Feb. 26 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW.
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, February 2022