Renelle White Buffalo: From What I Gathered

SITUATIONS is pleased to present From What I Gathered, a new body of work by Renelle White Buffalo. Drawing from the distinct geology of her childhood and the rigid concrete of her current city environment, White Buffalo transforms landscape, environmental observation, and Lakota cultural practices into layered, abstract paintings. The exhibition features White Buffalo's Hill Series and Collection Series. Working with brushy, painterly strokes on archival translucent paper, White Buffalo builds her compositions through cutting, piecing, and collage. These fragments are assembled onto the canvas in abstracted, hill-like forms or arranged like collections of gathered rocks and shells, echoing the contours of remembered landscapes. Fields of color—deep red earth tones, shifting greens, and atmospheric hues—accumulate across the surface, evoking the rhythms and tonal variations of the natural world. Ribbons and knotted strings extend from the canvases, referencing Lakota prayer ties and regalia. These elements respond to subtle viewer movement, evoking the wind and the imprint of human presence. In the Hill Series, she reflects on a longing for the earth: "In the city, there's a hard shell of concrete between me and the earth. I'm convinced the rigidity of the metropolitan stereotype comes from never being able to touch feet on the soil of the original land. This disconnection lingers with me, even when I return to the Midwest. Through layered painting, I aim to capture the layered history and ongoing impact of nature, humans, and animals." Her Collection Series recalls excursions in her hometown to gather rocks. To get there, she climbs a hill, passes the river, crosses under a busy highway, and along the way notices the small, overlooked features of the landscape: "That hill now has a giant Hollywood-style lettering saying 'White Buffalo' courtesy of my uncle. I wonder if all the good rocks are gone from there?" These formative encounters with landscape and memory inform her abstractions, linking lived experience with Lakota visual traditions and environmental observation. By centering specific forms, motifs, and environmental experiences, White Buffalo challenges conventional notions of abstraction and painting, creating work that bridges memory, cultural practice, and engagement with the land. Her work invites reflection on how memory, culture, and environment shape our understanding of place and presence.