“Recently Discovered Artifacts”
A site-specific art installation presenting a cache of hidden “artifacts” from a purported secret antiquarian society once active in the historic building located at 38 E Holly Street in Old Pasadena.
Exhibition on view: November 21, 2024 - Jan 12, 2025
Opening Reception: 6pm-9pm on Thursday, November 21, 2024
At the Gold Bug Gallery / 38 E Holly Street, Pasadena, CA 91103
(626) 744-9963 @goldbugpasadena goldbugpasadena.com
Gallery Viewing Hours: 11am-5pm. Check for Holiday Hours online before visiting. No appointment necessary.
Gold Bug Gallery is excited to announce the upcoming exhibition of “Recently Discovered Artifacts”, a site-specific installation by Pasadena-based artist, John Griswold. The display adopts the form of an early twentieth century museum display of enigmatic ritual objects, ephemera and paraphernalia purportedly discovered during the recent renovation of the Gallery’s back room, an evocative and intimate space now hosting a range of occasional bespoke experiences.
The scope of the retro-museological installation includes forged archaeological documentation and scholarly discourse accompanying the enigmatic fragments at their rediscovery, prompting visitors to conjure their own scenarios of context and meaning. A lesser known oracular cult shrine in ancient Greece, the Cave of Trophonios, inspired the clandestine rituals and divination practices purported to have taken place here. While at least some of the objects may survive from the nineteenth century, they appear to have been in use shortly after the opening of the brick building in 1910. Evidence suggests they were re-hidden several times within the 38 E Holly space.
This installation seeks to tap into the enduring fascination we share with the ancients to allow ourselves to be coaxed and primed into a more receptive, insightful state to satisfy our deeply human need to find a sense of wonder, marvel and connection “beyond the veil”. The Roman travel writer Pausanias tells us about several shrines in the ancient Greek world, including the Cave of the Oracle of Trophonios at Levadia in Boeotia, laying bare the deception and trickery involved in inducing a terrifying yet ultimately thrilling and satisfying experience for the seeker of divine insight. We have the uncanny ability to suspend disbelief, even when we are presented with the prosaic underpinnings and theatricality of ritual practice, allowing for epiphanies and reveries. We have always drawn upon both highly personal and shared rituals, ceremonies and practices to strike a connection with forces and energies of personal growth and revelation. They certainly resonated with the burgeoning fraternal societies of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and bear resemblance to contemporary metaphysical practices today.
Opening Reception 6pm-9pm Thursday, November 21, 2024
This event is open to the public, no RSVP necessary. Please join us!
Gold Bug invites its L.A. community to spend the evening delighting in this collection of mysterious art with drinks and hors d’oeuvres provided by neighboring restaurant, Bone Kettle during the opening reception of the exhibition. The artist will be present during this event, discussing the techniques used to imagine and construct the objects on display.
John Griswold
John Griswold’s work dissects mythological classicist tropes, fragmenting and recombining them, with all their latent meaning, within a surrealist frame of reference. He has amassed a lexicon of symbolic devices from ancient classical sources, antiquarian emblem books, baroque mythological and devotional iconography and alchemical treatises. Griswold’s fascination with the persistence of neoclassical and romantic allusions and symbolic devices, injected throughout 19th and early 20th century secret societies and fraternal organizations, and their relationship to changing frameworks of modern authority and power, permeates his work. Griswold’s training as an art conservator informs his archaic painting techniques.
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