Caroline Absher

Lost Language

V1 Gallery is pleased to present 

Lost Language
A solo exhibition by Caroline Absher
May 1 – June 6, 2026 

Opening reception: May 1, 16.00 – 21.00

Have you ever smiled to yourself at a message hidden in plain sight? A bird's imprint left in the snow, gone before you could be sure you saw it. A cloud formation that held, for one suspended moment, the shape of something familiar. These moments arrive uninvited, visible only to us. Are they real? Do we perceive them, or do we will them into meaning? Where does the realm of the explainable end?

In this exhibition, Caroline Absher explores the symbols that surface around us daily, and the ways in which we attempt to decipher them.

Understanding human consciousness remains one of humanity's oldest and most elusive pursuits. For Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961), a symbol is not merely a sign, it is a living image pointing towards something not yet fully known, a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious. These flashes suggest that the boundary delineating inner and outer worlds is far more porous than we allow ourselves to believe, that the psyche is in constant, unspoken dialogue with the real to make sense of our experiences. 

Absher is fascinated by the power of pattern recognition, by the way the mind constructs our reality from fragment and feeling, and by the challenge of rendering the intangible into the physical, three-dimensional canvas. Her practice draws from a constellation of sources: a lifelong love of science fiction, formative experiences of deep meditation, braided together with a restless desire to push both technique and material further.

Absher’s vivid paintings alter the atmosphere around them. The strokes of her brush pulse like streams of charged particles, fields of cosmic radiation waiting to be released. Beneath the apparent chaos, hidden figures emerge: ghosts, angels, messengers. Divine emissaries crossing past, present, and future, held simultaneously within a single surface. Each surface conceals its own archaeology: infinite layers of oil paint, multiple versions buried and reworked. A metaphor for time, for memory, for the self in perpetual revision. 

At a moment when we have largely outsourced our thinking to screens and devices, when the body has been withdrawn from the act of knowing, Absher calls us back to following our own intuition rather than seeking a fixed reading. Just as the symbols we perceive are never entirely fixed, her works resist final interpretation. Hovering fluidly at the threshold of abstraction and figuration, no two viewers will encounter the same meaning. Somewhere between spiritual psychosis and lucid enchantment.

Lost Language is Caroline Absher's first solo exhibition with V1 Gallery.

Caroline Absher (b. 1994, Winston-Salem, North Carolina) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  Absher's recent solo and group exhibitions include "The Silver Cord" at The Journal Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2025); “Persona” at Fredericks & Freiser in New York, New York (2025); “Lighting (Striking) Blue” at Loyal Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden (2024); “City Life” at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark (2024); “Blue Dream” at Shrine in Los Angeles, California (2024); “Back to Oz” at Fredericks & Freiser in New York, New York (2023); Tennis Elbow 107 at The Journal Gallery in New York, New York (2022), “Women of Now” at Green Family Art Foundation, Texas (2021), The Armory Show (2022,2023,2024) Independent New York (2024), among others. Absher has participated in artist residencies such as The Macedonia Institute, New York, further expanding her artistic practice. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art. 

Text by Louise Cattarinussi