Reimagining Reverence: A Spotlight on Gilded Icons

Icons are more than images; they are objects of meaning, devotion, and cultural memory. Throughout centuries and civilizations, artists have used visual symbols, known as iconography, to communicate stories, beliefs, and spiritual ideas. Through recurring motifs, colors, gestures, and materials, viewers learned to recognize sacred figures and understand complex narratives at a glance.   

One of the most enduring materials in this visual language is gold. Long prized for its rarity, brilliance, and resistance to tarnish, gold has been used to signify power, dignity, and transcendence. Gilding, the primary technique for applying gold to art and decorative pieces, has been used across cultures to transform objects into vessels of reverence and wonder.  

This exhibition highlights the historical use of gilding in iconography, as well as the processes of contemporary artists who incorporate modern materials and methods to expand gilding’s creative possibilities while preserving its distinctive radiance.  

Interdisciplinary painter, sculptor, and installation artist Peter D. Gerakaris’s Icons series ascribes depictions of endangered and rare plants and animals with the reverence and honor paid to religious figures. Gerakaris, through his use of gold and reimaging of visual iconography, creates an avenue for his own individual reconnection with nature as well as a call for preservation, inviting viewers to contemplate their relationship with nature, respect for the landscape, and awareness of a changing climate. 

On view in the American Art Gallery.