Suzanne Wright: The Alchemy of Equals at Tappeto Volante

Alchemy is an age-old mode of science that seeks to transform matter, turning it into something else, something new. It remains a relevant practice, prevailing as the medieval genesis of chemistry, which only went on to titillatingly promise a universal elixir to the denizens of the Renaissance. For centuries, alchemists lacked the scientific language to describe what they were observing in their experiments, as a result they projected their own subjectivity and personal processes onto external chemical operations – in this vein, the exhibition’s work at hand achieves its success. Through alchemy, lead is turned into gold, and as an 18th-century practitioner wrote with alchemists in mind: “Wherever thou art, all is brought to perfection; may the realm of thy Knowledge become subject unto thee. May our will in all our work be only thee, self-moving Power of Light! And as in the whole of Nature thou accomplishest all things, so accomplish all things in our work.”^[1] Here, a connection to the material world reigns supreme.

Embodying the archetype of change, alchemy allowed people to be hopeful for tomorrow because if something as mundane as lead can be turned into 9-carat gold, then maybe we can transform ourselves in similar ways. At once steeped in the study of matter-changing truths and cradling the thirst for a cure to all diseases and a way to live indefinitely through the sip of that one elixir, the alchemist’s art epitomizes eternal, ubiquitous desires. Nowadays, what I regard as alchemy takes place in the domain of the chlorophyll-hued ground dustiness of matcha tea leaves. Once activated with boiling hot water, then beaten and whisked by my two hands—one bearing cup, one handling tool–what was once dust gradually then magically becomes a frothy, iridescently bubbled, lime-green delight of a tea. Enacting this small transformation of matter is invariably enlivening.

Suzanne Wright is an artist whose roots rest in activism, and she carries the enlivening element of alchemy to a novelly creative domain in her current solo show at Tappeto Volante in Brooklyn entitled The Alchemy of Equals. An active part of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP, Suzanne has been fighting injustice in the gay community since the eighties. Her exhibition concentrates on some of America’s most famous sites of architecture and applies—in bright, three-dimensioned flashe vinyl paint the artist herself heartily describes as “faggy in color”—the visual aesthetics of activism in an alchemical way. As a feminist crusading an undying fight for women’s equality through abstract painting, Wright regards the ivory tradition that defines DC and emphatically paints a world more balanced, more encouraging (for females and gays especially), and more vibrant than the post-election divide America now resides in. She achieves this by reworking DC monuments, disco balls, a famous gay club, and a homophobic word with the flow of sacred geometry (think, the shapes that have divided and multiplied endlessly across nature; swirls, parallel lines, continuous angles) and by painting everything from thrilling, deviating angles, changing our perspective.

This is one painting in a series of many executed from the Goddess’ perspective. Wright began this collection by asking herself how one would go about feminizing the Washington Memorial. A new perspective is all it takes: the perspective of the planets looking down at Earth – some will call it god, feminists call it goddess–and this point-of-view sways to the rhythm of indifference in view of any phallic form. The Washington Memorial was inspired by the Egyptian Obelisk Tekhenu, a pyramidal, tapering salutation erected to and for the sun god. But from an aerial perspective, images invert, and so Wright’s painting captures the Memorial from above, transforming a masculine symbol into a universal one, creating, in turn, a true painted sense of equality and harmony.

#Feminist-alchemist (pentagon) is more blatant in its feminized aura, more forceful in its palette of hues. For Wright, painting this was catharsis. She inculcated the highly recognizable Pentagon with alchemical intentions and her vision of a world where women are as exalted and respected as America’s military. Steadily building layer upon layer of flashe vinyl paint has constructed edges on the canvas, ultimately reforming the architecture to Wright’s liking. Wright’s attempt to queer this building triumphs, as what was once a simple, colorless five-pointed shape has since been turned into something compellingly futuristic, featuring some semblance of a woman amid the orange-pink-and-yellow lines extending inward and outward. By applying color in a way that sought to transform the Pentagon, this exceptional appearance of a woman emanating from a star has been the result. Through this, Wright answers the question, What does alchemy look like painted?

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The Saint was the club of all clubs in the eighties, proclaimed as the Vatican of Discos within the Village’s gay community. It was shut down in ‘88 because too many men were dying from AIDS, and now it’s a 24-hour banking branch, depressingly enough. But in its heyday, this club’s ceiling was an expansive geodesic dome absolutely replete with flashing lights and spinning disco balls, relaying to any dancer who looked up the immediate feeling that their body was leaving the planet. With nothing obstructing their glance upward to visual nirvana bearing only light, one would mentally alight feeling unencumbered, unchallenged, and unsurpassed. This effect was intentional. The Saint strived to be an apex of escapism for any and every gay. Wright paints the club again The saints of saint marks place, almost out of memory, certainly out of admiration. The central disco moves melodiously from one hue to the next. Here, there is space to be, to breathe, and to dance. Paintings The making of my Disco, Moments in paradise (Area and Palladium hybrid), and Vatican of Disco each extend Wright’s nostalgic love for a place impossible to forget.

This painting, in particular, depicts Fibonacci’s spiral – the very sequence that grounds sacred geometry in mathematical principle. The disco careens about just as a mollusk grows its shell; a process beginning by their mantle and internal organs which progressively expands sequentially, growing their perfect shell outward. In this sense, The making of my disco is just as natural as a seashell you’d find on a beach’s wave-tossed sand.

This piece is for the pearl-clutchers. Faggot mandalas was titled as such in Wright’s enterprise of reclaiming and reworking a derogatory word. She only goes on to wink at the camera by taking the fused river-hewn wood branches and placing them in a scissoring position… a stereotype every lesbian is familiar with. The peaceful mandalas harken back to the goddess’ eye, and each set of concentric circles is cast in colors that honor the beautiful gay men Wright loved and lost. These mandala bullseyes function as an abode for each “faggot,” that is, as its primordial definition states, a bundle of sticks. For more background, the word “faggot” has been used in the English language since the late 16th century as a disparaging term for elderly women and widows who made a meager living by

gathering and selling firewood (the word’s present-day reference to homosexuality may derive from this, as female terms are typically used to homosexual or effeminate men, cf. nancy, sissy, queen). In the eighties, it was an impossible dream to Wright that words like dyke, faggot, and queer could not be incendiary. But, AIDS activism taught Wright that something derogatory can indeed be transformed into something new. Here, alchemy operates in full effect. And now, over time, these words’ meanings have been effectively altered. This kind of reclamation and transformation has to happen on multiple levels of sensory experience, in Wright’s opinion. She believes you have to be willing to be assaulted by the word queer in a new way, and so this piece stands in its everlasting wooden grasp, instructing us to be comfortable amidst all the change.

Alchemy is useful to anyone who seeks to effect change, whether in the material world or within themselves. As Suzanne Wright demonstrates, its creative and symbolic applications are boundless. By divining fresh forms out of patriarchal architecture, reconnotating derogatory language, and finding the sacred geometry in spaces of joy and resistance, Wright wields art as a force of liberation. Her work invites us to see beyond the structures and stories we’ve inherited, offering instead a vision of what could be: a world more equal, more inclusive, and more colorful. The art of transformation, inner liberation, and change will never fail to astound each of us passing by as we plow onward ourselves, seeking to transform anything, but most especially ourselves, in the most constructive way possible. Alchemy, in this sense, is not just a medieval science or an artistic metaphor – it is a call to action, urging each of us to embrace the power of transformation to forge something luminous from the leaden weight of the past.

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   Alchemical Texts, two prayers from Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803),Über die Zauberkräfte der Natur, Munich, 1819, translated by Joscelyn Godwin ↑

   The Alchemy of Equals at Tappeto Volante through December 8, 2024 @tvprojects.bk
   

About the writer: Amalia Rizos is a writer residing in North Carolina. She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in May 2024.