Finding a deep presence within moments of transformation is an important thread in her visual art practice. Emery Gluck is an LA-based artist interested in unveiling the poetics of time in transformation and the process of painting-gazing. “Pushing a ‘painting’ to be something more engaging and dimensional is exciting to me right now. I think painting and its presentation can often feel sterile and intimidating. I’m not after that.”

Liquidity and transformation are two key concepts emerging from your practice. Where is your interest in these stemming from?

I remember the first time I was asked to think conceptually about the paintings I was making in school - it was very exciting to understand that art could elicit more than visual beauty. I became obsessed with memory and the liquidity of it! I knew I wanted to make work that encouraged viewers to notice a.) the internal shift that occurs when looking deeply at something and b.) how their past experiences inform their current relationship with what they are looking at. There’s an exchange between viewer and artwork that is very transformative but you have to pay attention.
In the following years, I became fascinated with time and began to understand that it is cyclical and there are perhaps many things happening and being experienced at once, shifting and recalibrating with each new memory. The aliveness of the present began to feel very dynamic.
My interest in transformation has become an intrinsic part of everything I make, but it began with a curiosity about the magical nuances of memory and time - particularly in moments of intense personal life changes.

What are you working on at the moment?

I just finished two back-to-back installations, so right now I am working on savouring summer and California stone fruit. I feel open right now, and I also feel that there is another element waiting to be integrated into my practice. I’m not sure what it is yet, so I’m trying to move through the next few weeks in a way that invites that glimmering thing to peek through. I’m curious about what is next, and I'm also enjoying the spaciousness of that curiosity (as opposed to my more devoted-deep-dive-project-mode). And drawing, I am always drawing.

How did you come up with the need to expand painting to plastic forms such as melting ice, installations and collective experiences?

The idea came to me in the most shockingly clear moment of inspiration.
One day in August 2021 I felt this strong push to forego my typical studio routine and go to the beach by myself. I spent a lot of time in the water that day, and I felt its force both transport and centre me amid a very tumultuous time. Some debris floated by, and this image carried a clear message to work with ice. I knew I had picked up on something important and immediately went to my studio to start experimenting.
This all happened at a time when I was living in Portugal and processing so many personal changes. I was also grappling with my identity as a painter - I was facing challenges with the medium and deep down I knew I had to loosen the grip on my practice. Finding the ice felt like an opening.
It was pretty spectacular to see the melting ice objects I was making so closely resemble my gestural atmospheric paintings, yet communicate my conceptual concerns so powerfully. Ice has become an incredible tool/medium to contextualize my interest in transformation - the water cycle is very poetic but also widely understood as an elementary science lesson.
My larger installation work was born from a similar desire to push my practice. I often work with artists across various disciplines to create spaces that offer many points of sensory access. By collaborating, we build a world where multiple perspectives around a singular idea exist and complement each other. A viewer can walk in and connect first to the sound which may help them notice the video which then leads to a deeper understanding of the visual aspect. The interdisciplinary, melting, revealing, disappearing, cycling nature of the work communicates its aliveness (all art is alive!) in a very tactile way. It’s fleeting, so the act of looking at it becomes transportive.

What's your wish to exhibit and circulate your work? Where do you feel your art lives and communicates at best?

I want my work to elicit feelings of connection to the present moment that are so potent the viewer’s experience of time begins to feel other-worldly. I desire to create a framework through which to contemplate notions of time, aliveness, and conscious experience.
I’m interested in edges and meeting points - of the eternal and the ephemeral, of devotion and transformation, of the viewer and the artwork.
No matter the medium, I am interested in creating something that both holds the viewer and also reminds them that art is constantly changing. Not only because of its physical change of state but also because the viewer is approaching the work from a unique place with their own past experiences informing how they interpret it. The viewer is always a part of it, always.
I think enchantment can get us to a very euphoric understanding of truth. My work thrives in spaces where creative ways of looking are encouraged.

Where do you believe painting as a medium is heading? If it has any limits, what are they?

Painting is very seductive. It can evoke such a sense of intrigue and wonder, and that will always be exciting to me. I don’t think an artwork can be “dead”.
However, I do think it’s important for artists to get honest with the why of what they choose to make. I’m not sure if paintings on a gallery wall are the most effective form of communicating an idea with an audience.

Pushing a “painting” to be something more engaging and dimensional is exciting to me right now. I think painting and its presentation of it can often feel sterile and intimidating. I’m not after that.
I’m interested in engaging the viewer in a very immersive way because I believe in the power of looking at art and the positive effects it has on our mental health, our connection to the world around us, our understanding of systems and imagination, everything.
I don’t think I’m alone in this desire for a deeper experience. A lot of what I’m seeing is immersive work that holds a hand out to the viewer, inviting them to enter.