BEYOND
Flora Kao
January 13 – February 3, 2024
Opening Reception, Saturday, January 13th, 4 – 7pm
LAUNCH Gallery
170 S. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
LAUNCH Gallery proudly presents BEYOND, a new immersive installation by Flora Kao exploring the mesmerizing beauty of Taiwanese lotus offerings. In Taiwan’s Buddhist tradition, grieving family members fold 108 origami lotus each week for seven weeks. Each week, 108 handmade blossoms are ceremonially burned until the lotus covered-body is cremated on the forty-ninth day. The ritual burning of origami lotus serves as a portal for the dead to the afterlife and for the mourning to solace.
Documenting her grandparents’ funeral rituals, Kao’s photographic series Portal present powerful close-ups of lotus offerings consumed by flames. Kao’s installation BEYOND features hundreds of handmade paper lotus suspended in a calligraphic cloud of sacred yellow, the Buddhist color of enlightenment and freedom. The loss of a loved one shatters life as we know it. Kao’s art asks how do we heal after catastrophic loss? How do we gather hope beyond the abyss of heartbreak and grief? The folding of origami lotus is an act of mourning, of seeking solace in meditative task, and healing in the slow act of making and creating beauty. The fragile paper bloom becomes a symbol of hope and rebirth in the face of loss.
“My new work explores transcendence and rebirth after a heartbreaking season of grief and isolation. As I make 108 origami lotus for each loved one I have lost, I contemplate beauty, memory, and meaning. BEYOND is a personal meditation on love and loss, an encounter with the sublime.”
About Flora
Working in installation, painting, photography, and video, artist Flora Kao explores the poetics of human relationship with environment. Examining the psychological potential of constructed space, Kao transforms everyday structures into systems of beauty. Kao examines our impulse to order and preserve in the face of the unknown and uncontrollable. In mapping presence and absence, Kao meditates on memory, mortality, displacement, and decay. Hovering between restraint and collapse, Kao’s work anchors moments of intense emotion through repeated action. Kao’s art responds to our contemporary dislocation from environment. In constructing moments of poetic beauty, Kao challenges the rote experience of space through unexpected sensory encounters with the organic and handmade.
In Los Angeles, Kao has exhibited solo at Grand Central Art Center, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Commonwealth and Council, Gallery 825, Art-merge LAB, HAUS Gallery, the LA Art Show, and the UC Irvine University Art Gallery. Kao holds a MFA from UC Irvine in Studio Art, a BFA in Painting from Otis College of Art and Design, and a BA in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College.
About Launch
LAUNCH LA believes exposure to the arts enhances quality of life and strengthens community for all through the shared appreciation of creative expression in all its forms and hybrids. LAUNCH LA is passionate about providing all artists regardless of background, race, color, creed or sexual orientation with quality opportunities to present themselves and their creations that reflect our times to curious and enthusiastic audiences at our Gallery and at important happenings throughout Los Angeles County.
