Exhibition - Eve Wood: Ravenology

At our new location Track 16 is pleased to present as its inaugural exhibition Eve Wood: Ravenology. Wood’s second solo exhibition with Track 16 is a series of works on paper that explores her surreal fascination with the black bird. In some works the raven acts as a sidekick – equal parts protector, companion, and tormenter. In others, the ravens take on human-like form, preening in couture gowns.

Our minds work associatively, linking images and ideas, shaping reality through stories, myths, and symbols. The raven, perhaps more than any other creature, has embodied this impulse toward myth-making, transforming across centuries from a trickster to a prophet, from an omen of doom to a symbol of renewal.

Eve Wood’s works inhabit this mythic space while simultaneously dismantling it. Her paintings and drawings conjure the ordinary and the surreal, depicting familiar yet unsettling figures and scenes where the raven is both an active agent and a silent witness. In some works, the bird weaves itself into intimate moments, complicating relationships, while in others, it emerges as a force of transformation, restlessly unsettling meaning itself. Whether looming over lovers, manifesting as thought and memory, or erupting into a spectacle of fire, the raven in Wood’s world is never passive, but functions as an agent of ambiguity, threading myth into the everyday.

There is a palpable tension in Wood’s work between humor and darkness, a space where transformation and rupture coexist. While the opportunistic ravens serve up mischief and foreboding, Wood’s humans struggle for intimacy and survival. 

The raven, ever loquacious, ever shifting, speaks both for and against us, revealing the absurdity of our desires, fears, and constructed histories. At the core of Ravenology is an exploration of perception – of myths, of bodies, of the ways narratives both reveal and obscure.

Eve Wood is a Los Angeles-based artist and poet. Ravenology is Wood’s second solo exhibition at Track 16 and the Riverside Art Museum currently has on view her first solo museum exhibition which continues through March 30, 2025. Past venues for solo exhibitions include Susanne Vielmetter, Western Project, Ochi Projects, and Sloan Projects. She is represented in Los Angeles by Track 16. Wood is the author and/or illustrator of seven collections of poetry and chapbooks, including The Artists’ Prison (X Artists’ Books); her latest book of poems, A Cadence for Redemption (Del Sol Press) constitutes an imaginary conversation between Abraham Lincoln and a 21st-century American woman trying to make sense of the chaos around her. Released in 2023, Wood’s most recent book comprises her collected essays for Artillery Magazine titled Remarks on Color. Her writing and poetry has been widely published in magazines and literary journals such as The New Republic, Best American Poetry 1997, The Denver Quarterly, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Santa Monica Review, Poetry, The Seattle Review, and many others. She’s contributed criticism to Artillery, Tema Celeste, Whitehot, Art & Cake, and Riot Material. She holds a BFA and MFA (1992, 1994) from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from UC Irvine (1996) in creative writing. She is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Fellowship and a California Community Foundation Fellowship.

Our new location is in East Hollywood just north of Melrose Ave. Track 16 will also continue to mount exhibitions Downtown in the Bendix Building in our space on the first floor (Suite 100 at the end of the lobby).

Dates: March 29 - May 17, 2025

For more information, email gallery@track16.com.