August First Friday at Aurora features the opening of a new exhibition in our Efroymson Gallery, Um Passo à Frente, with work by Erin Patton McFarren.
Artist Erin Patton McFarren creates large-scale cyanotypes as a means of marking time and place. Using non-toxic materials and the original 1842 recipe, her cyanotypes interact with sunlight and bodies of water, allowing shifting forms of light and movement to produce unique images on paper. In 2024, Patton McFarren was awarded the Eli Lilly Creativity Fellowship, which enabled her to spend a summer creating art along the coast of Brazil making the work that would become Um Passo à Frente.
Patton McFarren writes of her work:
“My journey as an artist is one of movement — both physical and internal. Each place I have explored in Brazil — Itamambuca, Rio, São Paulo, São Luís do Paraitinga — has left its mark, offering new ways of working, observing, and being.
I create in conversation with my surroundings: watching waves roll in before they break, studying the changing light, and allowing the wind to guide the process. I work with nature rather than against it, embracing the elements — water, sun, and earth — to form images that echo the rolling hills, ocean tides, and shifting landscapes around me.
The presence of Iemanjá, the Great Mother of the Sea, has been a recurring force in my cyanotypes. She represents balance, protection, and the deep emotional currents that shape us. Like the ocean she embodies, my process is fluid, unpredictable, and deeply connected to the environment. My practice is about surrendering to place — allowing it to transform not only the work but the self. I arrived in Brazil without expectations, and in return, I found a version of myself that was always there, waiting to surface.”
Um Passo à Frente will be on view at Aurora until September 15.
Juan Brenner’s series Genesis is filled with the beauty, aspiration, sanctity, and desire of the Guatemalan Highlands, where Brenner lives and works. In his images, as in the Highlands, traditional codes of power intermingle with a vibrant and vital youth culture, which mixes the ancient dress trajé with heavy metal t-shirts, ornate teeth art, and the ubiquitous cell phone. Published as a book in 2024 by Guest Editions, the large-scale prints in this exhibition of Genesis distill the grit, glamour, and always gold of the Highlands.
Brenner writes of his work: “For the last 5 years most of my work has been focused on understanding the complex phenomena pertaining to a very particular and important territory known as the Guatemalan Highlands. Starting from the Spanish invasion of Guatemala in the 16th century and its repercussions, then going through the imposed obscurantism that subdued and crushed the local reigns and finally a new colonial system that shifted the power balance in favor of the invaders, I've been garnering many ideas that have become key ingredients in my subject of research.
Genesis will be on view in Aurora’s Main Gallery until August 15.