Cindy Phenix: Water Shed Twinkle

In the background, a muffled noise. It’s the sound of water, flowing beneath the large oil paintings that surround the fountain made of glass, wood, and ceramic at the heart of the gallery. Like a melodic undercurrent, this wave seems to inspire the figures in canvases Bird Noises Disappear Together With Satin Bowerbird, Wind Noises, Water Noises and Distance to a Certain Delicacy Disintegration to join in the movement, musical instruments in hand or booms and microphones lying in wait. Cindy Phenix asks herself, “What would be the last sound heard on Earth?”

In the exhibition Water Shed Twinkle, Phenix celebrates her first decade of art production (2015–25) with a new body of work that plays with the title’s words and implied meanings. “Watershed” refers both to the geographical notion of the point where waters divide and to the idea of a pivotal moment in history. For Phenix, this decisive threshold is embodied in the climate crises and ecological grief that characterize our times. Most of the paintings in the show were in the midst of production in her studio in Los Angeles last January, when the city was ravaged by wildfires. A perspective that is eco-centric – that is, revolving around nature – thus runs through her most recent series, in which she imagines the new connections, communities, and actions required to conjure the times to come. This is precisely what the scintillation suggested by the title’s “twinkle” is intended to open: a breach through which hope and joy can flow.  

To fuel her research, Phenix turned to the writings of the anthropologist Anna Tsing and the marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The latter argues that the restoration of ecosystems depends above all on the aquatic world and wetlands. In this vein, in Harmonized Discern Around the Iridescent Oration of Wavering Shallows and A Spell to Repeal a Certain Degree of Ghosts, a host of small gestures of care are made toward the canvases’ coral, whale, jellyfish, and mermaid habitats and ecosystems. The vivid colours and rich compositions that adorn the walls are translated into mosaics on the monstrous figure that occupies the centre of the gallery. The creature stretches its paw out toward the fountain’s basins – whose position one atop the other refers to ancient water clocks – as if it were going to dip it in. If it touched the water, would it trigger the end – the last sound heard on Earth? Or has it touched it already? One thing is certain: sound travels farther underwater. 

~ Florence-Agathe Dubé-Moreau