A text written by a theoretical physicist at the entrance to Firelei Baez’s exhibition at Hauser and Wirth Gallery invites gallery visitors to consider life on the minute scale of a cell, then flip to acknowledge our sun as one tiny star amid billions. Similarly, Baez sets up a mind-bending contrast between human attempts at understanding nature, represented by historic charts and diagrams, and spiritual forces that defy those efforts, represented by the bodies of powerful, goddess-like characters which she superimposes on the schematics. Over an architectural drawing for an incinerator located in New Orleans, a full-figured woman with nebula-like purple, blue and red skin and a head covered by or made up of foliage appears to awaken and rise, as if in response to the damage inflicted by the building. In the main gallery, stretching across the long back wall, Baez paints scenes of splashing water and abundant plant life over a mid-19thcentury diagram that charts the climate in locations around the world. In complete contrast to the measurable predictability suggested by the diagram, nature breaks forth in beautiful, energetic defiance of the systems of knowledge that would seek to know and exploit it. (On view in Chelsea through July 31st).
