1053 Gallery is pleased to present, “A Song to Follow,” new works by Ken Hiratsuka and Michael McGrath, on view August 10 through September 22, with an opening reception on Saturday, August 10, from 4-7pm.

Joshua Michael Shrei, in The Emerald podcast, says, “Have you ever noticed that after hearing a story of a golden spindle that spins by itself or a doll that sings or a ring that transports or a golden key that unlocks hidden doors that things shine just a little bit more in the waking world? That the everyday object becomes more than an object, it’s suddenly lit with a hidden life, a hidden fire? For it is the simplest of alchemies to understand that for us to see a world awake, we need to wake something within ourselves.”

“A Song to Follow” represents the visionary stone sculptures of Hiratsuka and paintings of McGrath and the mythic representations of line that course through the works. Hiratsuka attends to the spirit of marble and granite, bringing life through rock as sacred geometry and the feminine and masculine forms while McGrath’s paintings pulsate with open-mouthed beings, feline guardians and energy lines that leave fingertips and draw the viewer through a narrative transcending time.

Hiratsuka first began carving on the sidewalks of New York City in 1982, creating pieces which followed a single line. Since then his carvings have expanded to 25 countries around the world. Now his studio practice exists in the Catskills, amidst the natural spirals found in water and plants and fungi and fingerprints, the sacred shape uniting organic life. He brings an idea of the earth as one big stone to pieces which function as anthropological relics not stuck in linear time.

McGrath engages the mythic mind to bring imaginal realms into physical reality through large- scale paintings and drawings. Magic and mysticism are alive in these works which burst with childlike curiosity as forms and figures are abstracted into symbolic narratives which call upon movies such as The Labyrinth and Lord of the Rings, engaging playful elements of fantasy into the mundane.

“A Song to Follow” honors mythic creation, history’s ghosts, and the elements as we peer into the depths of mother earth’s heart and her spiraling creations. What is it that we behold, and what is it that creates through us as we walk toward our destiny, in an unbroken line? What shape does this path take? These pieces, both whimsical and grounded firmly in the stuff of the earth bring forward a language of connection and reciprocity among the seen and the unseen, and beings yet to be known. Here is a conjuring.