RAINEY STRAUS re(COMPOSING)

Rainey Straus's work begins with walking, listening, and close attention to the living world. Created for Mercury 20, _re(Composing)_ turns that attention toward fungi, following the ways matter breaks down, gathers, and becomes something else. The installation takes decomposers as a starting point: organisms that are also composers, transforming one kind of matter into another. Straus's materials follow this logic. Paper is shredded, pulped, and cast over found, downed wood, echoing the way paper wasps chew wood fiber into shelter. Lacing through these casts are bioplastic forms, spun like spider silk until gesture becomes structure. By working with already fallen wood, Straus treats the tree not as an ending but as part of an ongoing cycle of transformation. The work invites attention to other intelligences: the pathfinding of slime molds, mycelial networks, and forms of sensing beyond human perception. Rather than representing ecological change, _re(Composing)_ takes part in it: paper returns to pulp, pulp takes the impression of wood, and matter reorganizes itself into temporary form: fragile, provisional, and alive to what comes next.