Precious Otherworld: Teva Livne and Morgane Richer La Flèche
EXHIBITION OPENING — WINTER 2023
Winter Solstice, 2018 by @magic_world_girl
Join Teva Livne and Morgane Richer La Flèche in celebrating their first ever duet exhibition in New York City — Precious Otherworld. Opening night is December 15, 6-8pm at Shelter Gallery, 127 Eldridge St.
Left to right: Teva Livne and Morgane Richer La Flèche. Image and styling by Love Letter x 40k or less for vol.2.
Precious Otherworld, 2023 by @morganericherlafleche
“A goblin claws into the mucky floor of a swamp and pulls up a fistful of glittering creatures. Teva’s work lives underwater, in the mysterious darkness below the glassy, scintillating surface. Unknown beings make fleeting appearances for the worthwhile observer. Morgane’s work is in the mud itself: lines connected like a root system, colors of viscous decay, a subterranean heaven; the familiar rabbit, lamb, and dove made slippery.”
— Morgane Richer La Flèche
Seeing and curating Morgane and Teva’s works in the same space for the very first Love Letter event, vol. 1 — there was an instant visual chemistry.
The characters in each of their paintings feel like they can bend time, hop between canvases, and trick you into not noticing any of their shenanigans. Fairies, angels, dogs, butterflies, rabbits, cats, and horses swathed in rich color and texture feel holographic and hallucinatory — the paintings transform one another by expanding the imagination into infinite narratives. Each creature has a mystique that makes you want to know them in this human dimension, and their energies become palpably ethereal and magnetic, just gazing their way.
Teva has an innocence and sparkly moonlit quality about both her spirit, and the precious, magic world we are given access to in her painted portals. Many of the pieces in Precious Otherworld are from years past, and we joked that they feel like artifacts from the ice age — pre-pandemic, frozen into a block of ice that has now melted and brought them back to life. There is a feeling of rebirth and renewal, maybe a letting go of the chapter that made us who we are in this moment.
The way Morgane builds her layered brushstrokes and gorgeously felted pieces feels like a womb of interconnected webs, a stream-of-consciousness narrative of roots that supports the tree of life above ground. Each painting has a darkness that reveals the awareness of the shadow self, a deeply personal internal structural landscape — or as we said the first time we met — ethereal anatomy. Even her larger than life felted bows feel made from the human body itself, an extension of the heart, unraveled time and love and longing.
Love Letter vol. 2 — Brooklyn, NY
Morgane and Teva wearing felted bows by Morgane
We can’t wait to see you all at Shelter Gallery this Friday!
with love,
Jess
