bad water review: the possibilities of apples
Adi Blaustein Rejto's exhibition “The Possibilities of Apples” at Bad Water Gallery transforms the common fruit into a realm of artistic contemplation through paintings, physical installations, and accompanying poetry-prose. The thoughtfully curated show features abstract paintings with hidden mythological references, actual apples arranged on the floor creating an immersive environment, and conceptual pieces like “estrogen-coated apples” that playfully engage with contemporary discourse.
“Pretty apples on the ground.
Squirming juicers and worm-drawn crisps
Side-growers and bottom-blossoms
Golem rocky stems and seeds the size of dolmen stones
You can picture an apple. Imagine its form.
The stem, the skin, the flesh, the seeds, the core.”
These are the words of Adi Blaustein Rejto in Tasting Notes, a poetry-prose publication released alongside her exhibition at Bad Water Gallery this past Saturday, entitled “The Possibilities of Apples.” And so, yes, I invite you to envision: pretty apples on the ground. Slightly deformed, misshapen apples, spilling from a crate, forming a constellation of poetic artifice about the concrete floor. As I enter the space, I am aware of where I place my feet, of how my body moves around these apples, aware of my sudden gargantuan monstrosity towering over their delicate forms. I lean over a small group to inspect the nearest painting, nearly stumble over another forgotten apple with a broken stem as I go to view the next.
The painting in the back corner is what catches my eye, however, standing apart from the others in its pink hues and opalesque shimmering. I step up onto the wooden platform—first confirm the stability of the structure by testing it with my boot—and crane close to appreciate its delicate shimmer. The upper edge of the canvas—though I believe these to be cut from wood and painted upon panel—slopes at an angle, creating a subtle effect of forced perspective, as if I am stood to the left instead of straight on.
The painting is abstract in nature. Literally: in nature, as the implied form of an apple hovers in the bottom left corner. That opalesque column I interpret to be a tree. My partner points to the distorted, almost globulous, figure to the tree’s right: “That’s Eve,” he says. “She’s hiding.”
In Tasting Notes, Rejto writes:
“this scraggly guy comes out from the foggy dust,comes up behind the mother spider nymph, lifts her body up, cuts her neck with a dull knife, and picks up a bloody red apple - exclaiming to no one in particular:
LOOK, THE ORIGINAL APPLE OF EDEN, THE SEED OF DISOBEDIENCE, ITS MINE NOW, FREE WILL IS MINE TO HAVE.”
With this chapbook in hand, I notice another small work hung upon the wall: earthen tones formulating mounds of apples in the lower quadrant, above which the another form—one that mimics these round implications of apples—but this time, with spindly legs and the suggestion of fangs hanging from its central from. It appears to be a spider—perhaps that mother spider nymph, who stands tall above what is possibilities of apples.
The publication, in my experience, served as an index of meaning to the deliberately curated artworks. With this, I could reflexively interpret the works, creating my own web of exegesis.
Outside, there’s a table stacked with plumps of apple varieties—some look so foreign to me that I may assume that one is a baby pumpkin. They’re all coated in a strange, dusty blue substance. The sign reads: Estrogen-coated apples. I consider it for a moment—that is, consider its contextual connotations in a world so embedded in gender and identity politics—but such considerations die out when I decide to simply delight in its absurdity. It reminds me, as another friend remarks, of the sugary blue powders that we would pretend to snort during fifth-grade recess.
Rejto’s work, curated thoughtfully and intentionally by Bad Water, ultimately transforms the apple—an everyday fruit with profound mythological connotations—into a site of alchemical contemplation.
Adi Blaustein Rejto was born in Poughkeepsie, NY (1995). She lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and the Mid Hudson Valley. Bad Water is an art space located in Knoxville, Tennessee. Described by a viewer as a “soul-project”, Bad Water is led by a burning desire to support and connect deeply with artists, engage intentionally with the local community and art communities at large, and defiantly encourage the exhibition of diverse, experimental, and evolving art practices in the American South.
Bad Water is open during exhibition receptions & by appointment.
