Words, images, or gestures change meaning according to the context. Since the dawn of mankind, humans have crafted fables, myths, and stories to explain, scare, console, or inspire. Through these efforts, various occurrences, beings, or events earned new connotations, often becoming symbols. Yet, due to the said context (perhaps cultural or historical), these symbols can vary significantly.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are common plants used as herbs. Mentioned together, they sound trivial and unremarkable. However, when included in a traditional English folk song, S”carborough Fair” (best known by Simon & Garfunkel’s arrangement from the 1960s), they earn symbolic meaning rooted in folklore, herbalism, and spiritual connotations. In such light, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme symbolize virtues essential for relationships: comfort, wisdom, remembrance, and courage, and as such, they help to weave timeless stories of love and longing.
This phenomenon has been widely used in various art forms to underline, downplay, or alternate particular meanings or entire narratives. In literature, events or places are described in a particular context, enabling the reader to visualize even the most impossible ones. As mentioned, in music, words or phrases earn a whole new meaning due to the atmosphere of the melody in which they’re expressed. In painting, specific imagery can be depicted in an extraordinary surrounding or within a particular ambiance that shifts its initial or ingrained meaning. All this allows for familiar and fantastical stories to intertwine and exist, touching on different aspects of the person experiencing them.
The artists featured in this exhibition often embrace such methods as they conjure their visual narratives. Not shy of constructing entangled, strange, amusing, or dreamlike atmospheres outside regular logic circuits or folklore, the paintings are regularly grounded in notions of identity and personal history. Referring to anything from myths over popular culture symbols to communal activities, they build their narratives from the subtle relationships between their personal and collective experiences. From there, the particular traits of the subjects, the nuances of body language, and dialogue with either elaborately refined or semi-abstract backgrounds extend these ideas to broader social and cultural contexts. Employing the endless potency of painting to speak of the timeless intricacies of existence, challenge societal norms, or highlight the fleeting aspects of the human condition, the works reflect their experiences as humans and artists navigating everyday life.
Text by Saša Bogojev, curator of the exhibition Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, on view at Galeria Pelaires in Mallorca, Spain
The show features Katherine Bradford, Ferdinand Dölberg, Alessandro Fogo, Aubrey Levinthal, Gori Mora, James Owens, Christian Quin Newell, Nastaran Shahbazi, Mònica Subidé, Jonathan Wateridge and Matthias Wesicher
Top image: Aubrey Levinthal, Gallery Desk II, 2025
