Artist Weronika Zaluska uses inexpensive, light-weight cloth as a familiar “stand in” for other substances, in order to trigger a wide variety of perceptual sensations within the human body. The colorful, whipped-up layers of the soft and airy wall hangings are reminiscent of desserts, such as meringue pie or custard. Hinting at such sweets, the artist brings the viewer to a delectable sense of alertness, where attention to an object becomes intimate and sensuous. Zaluska is interested in the perceptual area in which cloth references desserts and other food-like surfaces used in art such as textured paint or cake-like plaster. It is a place where fabric playfully borrows the characteristics of other mediums, without attempting literal imitation.

A pursuit of seamlessness between lifestyle and art-making is essential to Zaluska’s work. Through a daily practice of meditation and yoga, as well as readings on neuroscience, she has been examining the relationship between bodily senses and the environment. The resulting body of work focuses on perception as a resurfacing layer of “right now”, as well as the chronological progression of how perception is “built” over time. The viewer comes face to face with the light-weight, bubbling fabric surfaces, revealing themselves before one’s senses just like subsequent layers of present moment “pealing off” and coming to the top.