What Grows Despite brings together three artistic voices that approach nature not as a romantic or neutral space, but as a field shaped by tension, control, and human intervention. Through textile installation, painting, and landscape imagery, Dana Cohen, Tana Gaxiola, and Uri Kloss explore how nature exists within systems of displacement, fencing, framing, and observation. Rather than disappearing under these conditions, nature in the exhibition persists, changing form, infiltrating restricted spaces, and asserting its presence in ways that are both fragile and forceful.
Dana Cohen presents a large-scale textile installation that occupies the gallery as a living organism. Constructed from agricultural netting and recycled textiles, the work blurs boundaries between inside and outside, growth and containment, sustainability and excess. Drawing on her background in fashion and fine art, Cohen transforms discarded materials into an expanding body that resists the gallery’s clean, controlled logic, suggesting nature’s ability to reclaim space even within rigid systems.
Tana Gaxiola’s paintings offer a contrasting yet complementary vision of nature as abundant, vibrant, and in constant motion. Inspired by prolonged observation of photographs of birds, flowers, and landscapes, her works erupt with color, texture, and rhythmic brushstrokes. From her Mexican perspective, Gaxiola introduces an emotional register of optimism and vitality, presenting nature as a powerful and affirmative force rather than a subdued or restricted one.
Uri Kloss focuses on marginal landscapes and overlooked elements from the kibbutz where he lives, depicting roadside plants, fences, and mediated views of nature. His paintings are quiet and static, creating a sense of suspension that contrasts with nature’s inherent vitality. Through fragmentation, framing, and obstruction, Kloss examines how systems of culture, ideology, and privatization shape our relationship to land and belonging.
Together, the works in What Grows Despite form a layered portrait of nature poised between freedom and confinement, optimism and restraint. The exhibition traces forms of growth that persist under pressure, growth that adapts, resists, and continues to redefine our relationship with the environments we inhabit.
