German artist Kathrin Linkersdorff’s ‘Fairies,’ a series of vividly colored yet ethereal photographs of flowers now on view at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery, takes up the age-old concept of memento mori – a reminder of life’s brevity – with contemporary imagery of flowers. While spending time working in Japan as an architect, Linkersdorff embraced her host country’s reverence for nature as well as the concept of wabi-sabi, or acceptance of imperfection and impermanence. With both philosophies in mind, Linkersdorff dries flowers over long periods of time, extracting their pigment and reintroducing it into a liquid medium in which the flowers are suspended. Resulting images like this one emphasize the delicacy and structure of the plants. Pictured as if the pigments had suddenly dropped away from the petals, the artist suggests a magical deviation from expectation. (On view through Oct 21st).
