We are excited to announce the opening of publisher/artist/musician John Scharbach’s site-specific installation, Exit Under Earth. Exploding in a kaleidoscope of colors, this “floating animal collage” serves as an immersive and nostalgic environment immediately conjuring ideas of fantasy, memories of youth and a chance to escape from an all too chaotic world.

The overwhelming visual accumulation also speaks to the obsessive, the problems of mass consumption and materialism and the ongoing problem of detritus and what becomes of these treasured items once one has outgrown their use.

As a street-side exhibition (in a post-Covid environment where storefronts remain vacant and downtown areas have become increasingly hollowed), it is a soft explosion beckoning passersby to stop and think for a moment about their relationships to mythologizing objects, seeking comfort in the inanimate, and assuaging feelings of guilt when it is time to move on.

But ultimately for the artist, contemporary reality may be a mundane concern.

“To exit - if you wish - one must travel under the world. All of life’s best offerings are floating just underneath what is presented to us. There will always be portals we can utilize to create the world you wish to inhabit.”
– John Scharbach

John Scharbach is an artist living in Washington DC by way of Tennessee. He co-runs Shining Life Press.

Shining Life Press: A publishing imprint based out of Washington, DC specializing in punk and hardcore fanzines as well as related subcultural ephemera.

Purchase Shining Life titles here.
Instagram: @crucialjohn, @shininglifepress
Web: shininglifepress.com