Exploding Stones, 2026
Leah Aegerter & Nori Pao
Aspen Collective Gallery, Aspen, CO
A fragment is a portal to the whole.
A fragment—a piece, a part, a portion, a section—inherently references the whole from which it came. By its very nature it signifies that there is more outside our field of vision, outside what we are immediately confronted with. Every rock we encounter is a fragment, a manifestation of a cycle that started long before us and will continue long after we are gone.
Our attraction to rocks stems from our deep appreciation of the vastness of the Southwest, where the immediacy of ancient mountain and desert geology demands reverence and humility from all who pass through. In these landscapes, time and space coalesce in an unending spiral of light to dark, day to night, sun to moon, the rhythm of a world that continues whether or not we are present. We witness these moments of connectedness between human time and deep time and call attention to them through our work.
Exploding Stones takes clay and paper rock fragments and translates them into portals, planets, clocks, and compasses, asking you to sit with past cycles and imagine new wholes.
