Glistening Water

Artist: Alena Ahrens

Curated by Zhiheng Ashely Zhang

Time: Nov.7 - Dec.7, 2025

Opening Reception: Nov.7, 6-9pm

Location: Sojourner Gallery, 178 Bleecker St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10012

In Glistening Water, artist Alena Ahrens invites viewers into a contemplative encounter with color, perception, and the quiet movement of time. Her paintings unfold like slow breaths—each layer of pigment, gradient, and gesture forming a rhythm that is less seen than felt. Drawing from both Color Field painting and the ritualistic processes of material transformation, Ahrens turns color into a vessel of reflection, a surface where memory and awareness meet.

The exhibition brings together two series, The Arc Paintings and Satori Paintings, that explore balance and awakening through minimal form and luminous tone. Curved lines and atmospheric fields suggest the passage between presence and absence, structure and dissolution. In the Satori Paintings, each work is composed using multiple thin layers of acrylic on raw canvas, allowing the material’s natural texture and absorption to guide the pigment’s movement. These subtle gradations create meditative fields that evoke moments of stillness and clarity—fleeting awakenings that arise in pause.

Like water catching light for an instant before returning to stillness, Ahrens’ works evoke the quiet revelations that occur when perception shifts inward. In those moments, what we see merges with what we feel; the external view touches something within. Through this gentle dialogue between form and emptiness, Glistening Water becomes a meditation on how beauty reveals itself—not in spectacle, but in awareness.