Hava Gurevich's two exhibits at Ann Arbor Art Center bring her brightly colored worlds into focus

by Pulp Staff
Tue, 10/21/2025 - 12:00pm
VISUAL ART PREVIEW

Cambrian Explosion captures that moment when life burst onto the scene in a dazzling display of creativity. Emerging from the deep blue depths, which symbolize the primordial oceans, are splashes of vibrant yellow, orange, and red. These bizarre tentacled shapes seem to emerge from a common source of cells, mirroring the Cambrian explosion's rapid diversification. Each swirl and curve hints at the unique forms and adaptations that blossomed in this evolutionary explosion: Large white pods, suggestive of primordial eggs, rest amidst the swirling currents, holding the promise of further evolution, while clusters of light blue bubbles, like miniature universes, hint at the nascent stages of new life.

Hava Gurevich, Cambrian Explosion OLDER

Ann Arbor painter Hava Gurevich loves the water, but she's surrounded by terra firma.

“My work is very aquatic and botanical, but it’s been more botanical in the last few years because I’m not close to any body of water that has life in it,” Gurevich told Pulp in 2022 in a profile about her exhibition Inspired by Nature: 20 Years of Art at the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

There are plenty of botanical works in Gurevich's Organic Fiction: Nature Inspired Abstract Paintings, her new exhibition at the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC), but her aquatic-inspired paintings are present, too. Not just in the main exhibit but also in A2AC's Aquarium Gallery, the large window that faces Ashley Street, just around the corner from the art space's main entrance on East Liberty Road.

Hava Gurevich's Betta fish painting of Brynner, who is purple, red, and blue.

Hava Gurevich, Brynner

The Tiny Muse: Betta Art mini-exhibit in the Aquarium Gallery showcases Gurevich's adoration for this popular aquarium fish. As she writes on her website about the Betta series:

This exhibition began with a tiny rescue fish named Sasha. When I adopted him, I had no idea how much this little red Betta would change my life. He quickly became my studio companion and muse; graceful, full of personality, and endlessly photogenic. Sasha taught me that even the smallest creatures hold unique stories, and we shared a special bond that still echoes through my work.

His beauty and spirit led me to start painting Betta Fish portraits, and through that process I discovered an incredible online community of Betta lovers. Over the past four years, I’ve hosted an annual “supermodel contest” to find remarkable Bettas to feature in a yearly art calendar. Each painting in this exhibition is a tribute, not just to Sasha, but to all the Bettas (and their humans) who’ve shared their fin-tastic presence with me. This growing tradition helps keep Sasha’s memory alive, and reminds me that inspiration can come from the most unexpected places.

This painting is an homage to our living planetary mother, Gaia, celebrates the remarkable resilience and perpetual transformation of life on earth. The canvas itself transforms into a microcosm of living ecosystems, teeming with diverse vegetation in all its stages, hinting at the cyclical beauty and interconnectedness of all living things. Lush greens and vibrant flowers pulsates with the hues inspired by the myriad of colors offered by nature, encapsulating the holistic essence of the Gaia Principle, where all of life is intricately woven together in a vast, dynamic web.

Hava Gurevich, Gaia

Over in the main gallery, Gurevich's gorgeous, hyperreal nature scenes evoke the world's most pleasant LSD trip, with lithe-stemmed flowers intertwining like lovers and undulating jellyfish-type creatures gliding among brightly colored tentacles that evoke sea anemones.

“My hope is that this series invites you to pause, to wonder, and to discover your own connections between the seen and unseen, the real and the imagined, the self and the living world," Gurevich states on A2AC's website, which includes this write-up of her paintings:

Hava Gurevich’s work is a celebration of the hidden magic woven through the natural world. Intricate networks of mushrooms, flowers, bees, coral, and imagined life forms that remind us how deeply everything is connected. In Organic Fiction, Gurevich explores these relationships through colorful abstractions inspired by botany, marine life, and microscopic worlds.

Guided by the repeating and fractal patterns found across nature, from pollen grains to river systems, Gurevich translates fleeting moments into layered compositions that blur the line between observation and imagination. These works evoke not only ecosystems but also thought systems, inviting viewers to contemplate how life adapts, transforms, and regenerates across time and scale.

Anchored in acrylics, Gurevich’s work is an experimentation of painting with photography, drawing, and other forms of image-making. A quick snapshot of a coral reef or a sketch of a blooming flower becomes the seed for lines, shapes, and colors that transform into her vibrant compositions on canvas.

Hava Gurevich's "Organic Fiction: Nature Inspired Abstract Paintings" and "Tiny Muse: Betta Art" are at the Ann Arbor Art Center, 117 West Liberty Street, Ann Arbor, through January 4.

Related:
➥ "Artistic Ecosystem: Hava Gurevich exhibits 20 years of nature-inspired art at Matthaei Botanical Gardens" [Pulp, August 17, 2022]

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