Watery Ecstatic 2004

Curator: Ellen Gallagher’s "Watery Ecstatic" from 2004 is before us, rendered with a stark yet compelling visual vocabulary. Editor: My first impression? It feels both ancient and utterly contemporary, like a fossil seen through a pop art filter. The limited color palette is unexpectedly soothing. Curator: Indeed, the reductive color scheme accentuates the labor-intensive printmaking process, potentially linocut. Gallagher’s choice of materials becomes a narrative element, alluding to the slow, deliberate process of crafting this image, this lone chambered nautilus, isolated against all this whiteness. Editor: All that negative space! It really makes the shell feel…unmoored, adrift. And the color—it's a deep, rusty red, almost like dried blood. Do you think there’s an intentional rawness here, playing against the geometric perfection of the spiral? Curator: That rawness, as you call it, is precisely what intrigues me. I wonder if Gallagher intends to evoke not only the natural form of the nautilus but also its consumption within broader material culture. The nautilus shell, historically prized as a decorative object, represents a confluence of natural beauty and human desire. Editor: Yes! There’s almost a hint of tattoo art happening too, or even microscopic images of cells! Maybe she’s pushing at our sense of scale here; is this immense or miniscule? Are we seeing the detail or a whole cosmos contained within? Curator: These swirling connections are so rich to unpack; the artist utilizes such reductive elements to tease them out for us, challenging our expectations for what is worthy of being deemed "high" art. The very act of taking a common natural object, reproducing it through the printmaking, questions traditional artistic hierarchies. Editor: Absolutely, it’s an odd mix that somehow coheres: science illustration meets primal doodle. I keep getting drawn to the… wetness of the red pigment. It almost seems like this nautilus just emerged, slick, from the ocean. Curator: Ultimately, “Watery Ecstatic” functions on so many levels. It compels us to reconsider how we engage with both natural forms and modes of artistic production, prompting introspection on human intervention, in ecological systems, artistic hierarchies and beyond. Editor: Well, Gallagher's nautilus has definitely shifted my own perspective a few degrees! There's something beautifully unresolved and profoundly engaging about it.