In Tribeca, NYC, 17 Women Artists Channel Other Worlds at Andrew Edlin Gallery

Andrew Edlin Gallery in Tribeca is showing "Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds" through October 31. The group exhibition brings together 17 artists, from the early 20th century onward, who gave visual form to alternate realities, spirits, cosmic forces and other planes of consciousness. They differ in era, nationality, economic background and spiritual belief, yet share a wish to render inner visions, in landscapes, portraits, narrative scenes and pure abstraction. Susan L. Aberth, Edith C. Blum Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College, curated it.

The show is anchored by Paulina Peavy (1901–1999), an American artist and medium whose work mapped a cosmic philosophy imparted to her by a spirit called Lacamo. Over many decades she worked iteratively, hoping her creations would expand individual and collective capacity for psychic phenomena. The gallery presents her writings on esoteric metaphysics, drawings and other works on paper, masks she made to help communicate with Lacamo, and paintings of biomorphic forms and energy beams. The gallery published the first monograph on her, Laura Whitcomb's "Paulina Peavy: Etherian Channeler," in 2023. Installation photos show her paintings lit against a deep cobalt-blue wall.

Other mediumistic artists include German-born Agatha Wojciechowsky (1896–1986), who held séances in New York and practiced psychic readings and spiritual healing. Her black-and-white ink drawings and notebooks record a language she said came through spiritual contact, shown with colorful watercolors of sitters' hands that revealed faces her clients recognized. Adele Watson (1873–1947) reached similar territory through the study of nature's spiritual dimension and esoteric movements rather than channeling; two of her symbolist paintings show ghostly female nudes floating above idyllic landscapes.

Agnes Pelton (1881–1961), a Theosophist and Agni Yoga practitioner, made semi-abstract paintings from images she obtained while meditating, and influenced the Transcendentalist Group in Santa Fe. Her "The Being: A Transcendental Vision" is included, along with an abstract watercolor by Hilla Rebay (1890–1967), co-founder of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and a watercolor study of floating geometric shapes by Helen Kendall (1892–1970). Among the Surrealists, Leonora Carrington's unproduced 1970 play "Opus Siniestrus" follows an old woman battling patriarchy and centers on the last surviving human egg. Paintings by her friend Leonor Fini, Juanita Guccione's amazonian women and New Age-inflected landscapes, and two dreamlike landscapes by Sylvia Fein round out the highlights. Madge Gill and Emma Kunz are also among the mediums.

The gallery is at 392 Broadway, 2nd Floor, open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm.