Flower Mandalas

Portia Munson is best known for her saturated pink plastic installation at the New Museum's "Bad Girls" show 1994. In her first exhibition at P·P·O·W Gallery entitled "Flower Mandalas", Munson creates compositions from her garden that contain the same immensity of detail and over-saturation of color. Munson collects these flowers at their peak, and lays them out on a flatbed scanner in concentric patterns close to the traditional symbol of the mandala used in both Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the universe. These flower arrays are captured in high-resolution scans and printed on watercolor paper with pigmented ink. Each print is a sharply detailed kaleidoscope that mixes the utopian beauty of the Garden of Eden with the dizzying visuals of a psychedelic acid trip. The flowers seem to burst out like that of a pyrotechnical climax. Portia Munson had her first one-person show at White Columns in 1993 and has exhibited in numerous group shows as well as had two solo shows at Yoshi Gallery since 1990. She lives and works in upstate New York.