Gallery: Tessa Farmer

As I stared and stared at artist Tessa's Farmer's exhibit at the Spencer Brownstone Gallery in NYC last winter, I knew my world had been changed. It wasn't just the gruesomeness of her materials that made an impression, it was the completeness of her vision--so carefully realized and beautifully detailed. Farmer is a gifted creator of dark fantasy worlds. Her installations feature aggressive fairies wielding spears against insects and planting themselves on hapless dogs and birds (among other familiar animals). That's not all. The fairies, it turns out, are each so miniature that, peering at them with the unaided human eye, you can hardly see all there is to see. Not only that, but, well, they're composed of dead insects. And the dogs and birds they perch on are real, dead dogs and birds. But the most interesting thing about her installations is that these details become less important, the more that you look at her work. It's not every day that someone creates whole worlds. Go for the shock factor; stay to marvel at her talent. Farmer's work will be showing, along with that of other artists, at the State Hermitage Museum, in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, from October 25 through January 17, 2010. an expanded version of the same exhibition will open at the Saatchi Gallery in London in June 2010.