Ms. Tori Wranes unleashes a strong representation of her material craftsmanship in her Mussel Tears opening at Shulamit Nazarian. What is most spectacular in her formations is in some balance of the serenity of misty oceanic sensations and its titillation of the visual senses. I have been a fan of the extension of the tactile and continue to be in the fine arts, as it provokes novel stimulation beyond simply the vividness of colors to stupefy.

It is in the direction of the artwork, most curiously with, Mothers and Child, 2022, however, which raises the question of what is the proper motivation for beginning to make art? For while her craftsmanship is uncanny in the creation of her objects – with squishy elasticity in the trainers of one of the “mothers” – the media represents nothing less than a fetid-sick abortifacient. Is this what good art celebrates? Is the motivation of art to always be celebrating the good things in life, good things for humans to desire, such as to love children? Rather than their aborted sacrifices? Does this art signify the rejection of the responsibility of living a life aligned with the cosmic order? Does it reject the creation of love?

‘Mothers and Child’ by Tori Wranes courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian.

Good artwork affirms the beautiful in man. Even in the case of tragedy, such as with Picasso’s Guernica, the sympathy extended by the artist’s imagination is to bring man closer to a pure representation of the extension of his mind, always away from violence, towards mutual agreements which resonantly continue endlessly – a genuine definition of making love and peace in the world he resides in. Mothers and Child repudiates the clear distinction of sexual dimorphism in man; that he is both male and female, masculine and feminine, and that with these two energies in symposium, there is the generation of more truthful ends; those of modest happiness such as birthdays and eventually weddings, to repeat the harmonious motion in extending our available human ends for Joy in creation in perpetuity.

‘Mothers and Child’ Tori Wranes courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian

It cannot be ignored that Ms. Wranes is extending her representations from a culture which has an ebbing fertility rate. Is she merely reflecting the inner-worldly experience of this lassitude of living? Is she not forming a continuum with the Nietzschean perspective of Western Man’s loss of God, and instead affirms decaying into onanistic play, abandoning life responsibilities and duties toward breathing more birthday candles and giggles? The work’s representation is categorically in rejection of the natural world; the final testimony of Christian man’s self-fulfilled prophesy in corrupting his inner nature through the powerful instrumentations and devices he has birthed in a Faustian manner. Nevertheless, does all this power and wealth, such as that secured by the Norwegian Welfare, lead to more happiness? How can there be, when, on a quantitative basis, their population is at a stand-still and women are proud of aborting human potential despite being one of the richest nations per capita in World History?

‘Mussel Tears’ by Tori Wranes courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian

‘Mussel Tears’ by Tori Wranes

Nevertheless, when Ms. Wranes does affirm Nature’s path, as she does in her Mussel Tears, we have inventive mixed media of dangling earring-shaped objects which do not submit to the makings of the hands of man, but instead celebrate his harmony with the world and how the outside natural powers which have governed the fate of the cosmos toward such incomprehensibly refined forms – mussel shells in this case – has also allowed man to play with this life-force which is a current contained in anything materially expressed in the conscious representation of his mind, such as music. This content is harmoniously extended with the tear drops which can find their fun and original expression in hallways and living rooms accents.