Lara Kempke: Spiritus Animales

bG Gallery presents Spiritus Animales, a featured exhibition of work by Lara Kempke exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world through painting, sculpture, resin, assemblage, and transformed musical instruments. About bG Gallery is pleased to present Spiritus Animales, a featured exhibition of work by Lara Kempke exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world through painting, sculpture, resin, assemblage, and transformed musical instruments. Kempke's work centers on the symbolic and emotional resonance of animals and the ways non-human life shapes our internal landscapes. Animals emerge throughout the exhibition not simply as subjects, but as active presences—figures capable of guiding intuition, embodying resilience, provoking empathy, and opening pathways to imagination. A trained vocalist, Kempke brings a particularly strong connection to music into her visual practice. She is fascinated by the visceral intersection between art that is seen and art that is heard, and several works transform musical instruments into sculptural objects. Violins, brass instruments, and other unexpected forms become part of an imaginative visual language in which music, animal life, and human experience overlap. Rather than presenting animals as passive images, Kempke seeks to blur the boundary between the seen and the felt. Her creatures and hybrid forms occupy a space somewhere between physical reality, memory, intuition, and mythology. The resulting works invite viewers to consider other living beings as presences possessing their own agency and meaning. At its core, Spiritus Animales is an exploration of connection: between humans and animals, sound and image, physical objects and imagination. Through this interplay, Kempke considers questions of stewardship and our relationship with the living world while celebrating art's ability to transform ordinary materials into unexpected encounters. Mixed media Painting Sculpture