Like vivid flowers blooming out of damp soil and bright eyes emerging from dark wombs, German artist Rosa Loy has trekked deep through the trails of her own subconscious, lush with shaded verdure, and come to a restful pitstop within lichtung, a word she describes as “the place in the middle of a dark forest where the sun is shining.” We all know the feeling of this journey, as if trudging through the undergrowth, and what a relief it is to finally reach a clearing after strenuous forward movement through the jungle. Bringing light to these strange times, Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to present Glade, on view from March 9 through April 20.

With origins as a trained horticulturist and the use of casein (an ancient water-based paint derived from milk protein) as the main material in her work, Rosa Loy is no stranger to alchemy and its traditional associations with female labor. Inspired by German folklore, Loy’s work is rich with symbolism and much like the secretive nature of life and creation, the relationships of her subjects are never fully defined. In the intimate watercolor Aus Dem Augenwinkel, a female figure resembling a nymph (or possibly a devil) lounges on a tree branch, her gaze seeming playful yet charged with eroticism. In her painting Überall, the striped legs of one woman fuse with a hole in the other’s pelvis. Posing questions of kinship and nature, Loy toys with the surreal and the fertile in her all-female worlds.