Artist Matthew Bainbridge @ Stellarhighway, Brooklyn, NY - "A Scene on the Lid of a Sleeper’s Eye" Exhibition

Matthew Bainbridge

A Scene on the Lid of a Sleeper’s Eye

Stellarhighway, Brooklyn, NY

June 14 - August 3, 2025

MATTHEW BAINBRIDGE 

Sky Dragoon, 2024 

Colored pencil on paper, 10 x 7 inches

© Matthew Bainbridge, Courtesy of Stellarhighway

MATTHEW BAINBRIDGE 

Everlasting Love, 2024

Colored pencil on paper, 12 x 16 inches

© Matthew Bainbridge, Courtesy of Stellarhighway

MATTHEW BAINBRIDGE 

Moon Bloom, 2025

Colored pencil on paper, 10 x 7 inches

© Matthew Bainbridge, Courtesy of Stellarhighway

Stellarhighway presents A Scene on the Lid of a Sleeper’s Eye, MATTHEW BAINBRIDGE’s first presentation of work in New York. Centered on themes of longing and discovery, the ten small drawings in this presentation are displayed unmediated, as raw objects against the wall.

Bainbridge’s non-human characters, abstract fields, and garishly colored landscapes are highly dramatized, aiming to decenter the circumstances they explore. His surfaces themselves are heavy with direct metaphor, where the sheen of waxy colored pencil is casually disrupted by the paper texture or some gesture that calls to the artist’s hand. These tableau of manifested and embodied emotions—longing, despair, joy, terror—have the heightened sense of a stage set into which viewers have entered at the peak of the performance: a pot-bellied flower monarch intently engages a sci-fi orb at the edge of a high coastal prominence, its robes catching a soft breeze as multicolored blooms begin to gently wash around it; later we see this same sovereign having surmounted a whirlwind of flowers, a triumphant fist to its chest. In others the scene is simply set, playerless as though point-of-view: colossal vines infinitely entwine themselves into hearts across a wide landscape; a golden moon rises over a dark sea, shimmering electric green from the coastline; a dark path snakes imploringly through alien wood, begging feet. Works like Sky Dragoon and Pebble Golem are periods of gestation, pure elemental moments echoed in the celestial sky swirling through each drawing.

Otherworldly and sometimes sinister, Bainbridge’s work pokes at our sense of place and purpose, positioning deeply human states in outlandish circumstances supported by comical players. Through theater and fantasy, he grazes our linked mortality. The artist writes, “…collective longing is found within the drooping of a flower, and wistful boredom in the bending of a root; familiar, organic lifeforms, twisted into personhood…”

MATTHEW BAINBRIDGE (b. 1992, UK) graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2014. Group exhibitions include those at Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, WA; Sargent’s Daughters in New York, NY; L'Inconnue in Montreal, Canada; Patriothall in Edinburgh, Scotland; and The Old Hairdressers in Glasgow, Scotland. He has been a resident at i.o.u.a.e, and received awards from the Phoenix Bursary and the Hope Scott Trust. Matthew Bainbridge has been featured in Art Maze Magazine, Elephant Magazine and Here Magazine. The artist lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

STELLARHIGHWAY

Brooklyn, NY 11233

www.stellarhighway.com

Timothy Wehrle @ Stellarhighway, Brooklyn - "Love Tones and Head Stones" Exhibition - Text by Susan L. Aberth

Timothy Wehrle

Love Tones and Head Stones

Stellarhighway, Brooklyn

March 29 - May 25, 2025

TIMOTHY WEHRLE

End of an Era, 2023 

Colored pencil on fabric and paper, 

mounted to wood panel, 9 x 6 inches

© Timothy Wehrle, courtesy Stellarhighway

TIMOTHY WEHRLE

Ödland Sexwuste, 2024 

Colored pencil, homemade ink, acrylic, dime 

and dried flowers on paper,

mounted to wood panel, 30 x 24 inches

© Timothy Wehrle, courtesy Stellarhighway

TIMOTHY WEHLRE

Magic Personality, 2025 

Colored pencil, homemade ink and acrylic 

on paper with found object, wax and human nails,

mounted to wood panel, 30 x 24 inches

© Timothy Wehrle, courtesy Stellarhighway

TIMOTHY WEHRLE is back with a set of five exquisitely rendered large-scale works on paper that continue his exploration of the psyche. In addition to his signature meticulous line drawings and hallucinogenic pattern-on-pattern layering, the works share certain iconographic elements. As the title of this exhibition suggests, Love Tones and Head Stones, Wehrle is mapping the thorny terrain of emotions with their precipitous highs and lows. Executed between 2024-25 these works reflect inner reckonings with isolation, interpersonal relationships, and political upheaval. A persistent character is a face in profile, shown from the nose up, a distant relative of the smooth-pated Phrenology bust whose head is divided into pseudo-scientific sections like “benevolence, self-esteem, combativeness…” Wehrle replaces words with imagery.

At the bottom of Some Still Say He’s a Good Person/a, such a head anchors the composition, a dizzying and phantasmagoric landscape of disparate parts blended by the artist to represent the vagaries of life. In the lower right corner, a faceless man in a suit (perhaps the ghost of Michael Jackson) operates the lever of a giant rollercoaster. As we follow its ascent it moves past a minimalist screen of embossed dots on white paper, only to dramatically loop around and drop, crashing head on into the center of the face’s forehead—occupied by a rendition of Disney’s Magic Castle—that explodes like a supernova, radiating stars, planets and a string of binocular-yielding heads that call to mind the black-masked faces embedded in Adolf Wolfli’s manic compositions.

Stairway to Seven consists of five paper panels vertically mounted and connected by a multitude of figures ascending a zig-zag escalator. They move through a landscape made up of half-heads, now containing rows of numbers that insinuate the passage of time. These rainbow-colored numerals are echoed on the left by inset rows of dice, propounding the journey of life ruled by chance. At number 7, Seventh Heaven, clouds part to reveal another Michael Jackson, the new Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, this time dancing. Ödland Sexwuste, an amalgam of recycled and collaged etchings and drawings onto a larger-sized paper, employs colorful repetitive elements of faces, patterns, and starbursts in a diagrammatic manner reminiscent of archaic esoteric illustrations. Filling the right side of the composition is a ladder with climbing nude figures who carry large severed ears on their backs like wings, nightmarish cupids somehow moving upwards and onwards.

Wehrle’s most recent work, Magic Personality, is a witchy incantation, replete with candles, crows and an Yggdrasil-like tree whose roots enter dark subterranean realms. Simultaneously whimsical, bitter and spiritually transcendent, the details in this work merit closer examination. The lower half reveals that an emotional exorcism is at work: mouths whisper into ears; the candles are in different colors like those used in magic; and, a row of magicians holding moon-like mirrors appear to trap entities within them. Enclosed by yellow and purple drops / flames, alchemical transformations are taking place above, while a reclining nude points her binoculars upwards towards a multicolored orbed spiral, hinting at better things to come. Within the embedded children’s toy at the top center, a familiar game whereby metal shavings are moved to form a face and beard, we see the half-head again, the artist’s doppelganger.

This is a rich and complex body of work, so be prepared to spend a long time looking at the details, then stepping back, and looking again. It is the kind of imagery that reveals itself over time and through attention, at once intensely personal and also universal. Like the drawings in Carl Jung’s visionary Red Book, Thimothy Wehrle attempts to express the abstract psychological concepts of emotional evolution, healing, and psychic transmutation in an accessible visual language that all can, on some level, understand.

Text by Susan L. Aberth, Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History & Visual Culture at Bard College.

TIMOTHY WEHRLE (b. 1978; US) makes obsessive artwork that is a patchwork of scenes both real and imagined. In them, the artist’s emotional labor unfolds: an ongoing quest for a sense of self and belonging. Exploring the dynamics and pitfalls of contemporary culture, Wehrle’s imagery deftly fuses an aura of charm with a complex vision of humanity, posing questions about civilized existence. Executed in graphite, colored pencil and ink that he makes himself from walnuts, Wehrle’s intricate images distill moments of experience like pages from a diary. His conceptual material is wide-ranging, spanning topics of lighthearted homage ( a quirky dog he saw on the street or the festive tendencies of octogenarians), to the poetry of everyday life (the mind-expanding capabilities of music, the intangibility of beauty and the complexities of love), to harsh comments on the ills of society (child abuse, poverty, internet pornography, the divisiveness of technology and the ultimate breakdown of human interaction). Timothy Wehrle held a solo exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI and has worked with galleries and institutions including Cavin Morris, New York, NY; Shrine, New York, NY; PPOW, New York, NY; and, Dieu Donne, New York, NY.

STELLARHIGHWAY

Brooklyn, NY 11233

stellarhighway.com

Beginner Ceramics, a Brooklyn-based ceramics studio founded by Jesse Hamerman @ Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York - "The Possibilities Are Endless" Exhibition

Beginner Ceramics

The Possibilities Are Endless

Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York

March 21 - April 26, 2025

Rachel Uffner Gallery presents The Possibilities Are Endless, a solo exhibition by Beginner Ceramics, a Brooklyn-based ceramics studio founded by Jesse Hamerman. The show features a striking range of hand-built sculptural objects ranging from vases to mirrors to lamps. Infused with bold colors, dynamic textures, and playful geometries, the pieces embrace traditional notions of functionality while exploring the tactile, expressive possibilities of clay. 

Jesse Hamerman founded Beginner Ceramics in 2021, rekindling a passion for clay that had lain dormant since college. After spending 22 years collaborating with artists to fabricate ambitious, large-scale works in a variety of media, Jesse Hamerman returned to ceramics with a deep well of technical knowledge and an open mind. "Exploring form with the mind of a beginner and creating with joy is the goal with every object," says Jesse Hamerman, reflecting on the ethos of the studio. 

Beginner Ceramics’ objects are rooted in minimalism and geometric abstraction, evident in the rhythmic linear handles that frame the vessels and the gestural swatches of color that dance across their surfaces. All of the studio’s objects are iterations on a similar formal theme, in the vein of Sol Lewitt, Fred Sandback, and other minimalists. This interplay between structure and spontaneity creates a dynamic tension, where the precise, symmetrical forms contrast with the painterly energy of the surface treatments.

The works in the show also radiate an undeniable sense of playfulness. Glazed in an exuberant spectrum of hues – electric blues, soft pastels, vibrant yellows, and earthy neutrals – each piece carries a distinct character, heightened by the vibrant, hand-painted walls. Looped handles, layered ridges, and the interplay of glossy and matte surfaces evoke movement and energy, creating a dynamic environment for the appreciation of craftsmanship.

The Possibilities Are Endless offers an opportunity to experience Beginner Ceramics’ work in an immersive setting, where form and function blur, and everyday objects become sculptural statements.

RACHEL UFFNER GALLERY

170 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002

racheluffnergallery.com

Pap Souleye Fall @ Stellarhighway, Brooklyn - HIDDENINPLAINSIGHT Exhibition Organized by Peter Kelly

Pap Souleye Fall 

HIDDENINPLAINSIGHT

Organized by Peter Kelly

Stellarhighway, Brooklyn

January 18 - March 15, 2025

Pap Souleye Fall 

GRIGRIGREENSCREEN, 2025

Web around expandable screen, 2012 to 2024 

gri gri, pearls, Kirby eyes, 52 x 52 inches

Pap Souleye Fall

GRIGRIGREENSCREEN, 2025 (detail)

Pap Souleye Fall 

GRIGRIGREENSCREEN, 2025 (detail)

In her essay Gender Dynamics of the Japanese Media Mix, cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito describes the phenomenon of “media mixing” in the following terms: “Japan has a more integrated and synergistic relationship among media types than one tends to see in US children’s culture. Popular series make their way to all different platforms of media and each plays off the strengths of the other. Weekly or monthly manga magazines provide the serialized narrative foundation for series, as well as a venue for disseminating information about new game and toy releases, strategy, and tournaments.”

Media mixing, as defined by Ito, plays a central role in Pap Souleye Fall’s studio. To properly contextualize this relationship one must first contextualize “Dead Pixel,” a personification of the conceptual underpinning of Fall’s work. Created as a central figure of Fall’s eponymous comic series, Dead Pixel began as an amorphous figure who digests and processes digital sediment, and has become a trickster spirit embodied in the multimedia artist’s entire practice.

Even in a nominal sense, Dead Pixel calls attention to some central tenets: a pixel is a physical object, directing light to comprise a digital image–simultaneously a physical and digital object. Colloquially, when an individual pixel’s light stops working, it is pronounced dead. A common theme in which Fall engages is the tension and balance between the physical and digital. In KEYEDUPKEYEDOUT, Dead Pixel is made corporeal, with human extremities protruding from quilted found fabrics, signifying the hue of green screen. Rather than conventional tracking points used in motion capture technology, Pap Souleye Fall utilizes pearls, cowrie shells, and peanuts–a nod to the history of Senegalese peanut farming and traditional West African decorative motifs. The green screen is referenced again through PIXEL OF “GUTTED VORTEX,” covered in monochrome green paper—Dead Pixel’s digestive process as detailed in the DEAD PIXEL comics–in which a group of objects are flattened, broken down, and ultimately processed. The green screens reference the vast expanse of the digital void–an empty space designed to be filled. Notably, “chroma keying” is a process that is teetering into obsolescence as CGI technology advances.

Each aluminum wall-based sculpture quotes a panel from Fall’s DEAD PIXEL manga series–segmented and cast into aluminum sculpture. This process highlights his interest in both media mixing and the embodied histories of physical objects. Recycled aluminum, quilting, beading, and assemblage are all notable in their incorporation of existing objects into a new distinct form.

PAP SOULEYE FALL (b. 1994) received a MFA in Sculpture at Yale School of the Arts in 2022 and a BFA in Fine Arts (concentration in Sculpture) from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts in 2017.Pap Souleye Fall is a Senegalese-American artist who explores the transmedia potential of sculpture, installation, performance, cosplay, digital media, and comics. Pap Souleye Fall has received the Daedalus Foundation Fund for Past Fellows & Awardees in 2023, the Black Rock Fellowship in 2023, the Ilab Fellowship in 2023, the Dedalus Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 2022, the Alice Kimball Travel Grant in 2021, and the Florence Whistler Fish Award for Student Excellence in 2017. Much of Fall’s work reflects his growing up within the African Diaspora. Being of two worlds, he realized that through art Fall had the ability to construct his own worlds. As such, Pap Souleye Fall became fascinated with the ways art could be embedded in everyday life, activating common materials to explore themes such as utopia, identity, notions of masculinity, Africanisms, and Afro-Futurism.

STELLARHIGHWAY

Brooklyn, NY 11233

www.stellarhighway.com

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet @ Brooklyn Museum - "I Will Not Bend an Inch" Retrospective Exhibition

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet 

I Will Not Bend an Inch

Brooklyn Museum

March 14 - July 13, 2025 

NANCY ELIZABETH PROPHET

Youth (Head in Wood), ca. 1930 

Wood 

Brooklyn Museum, 

Brooklyn Museum Fund for African American Art 

in honor of Saundra Williams-Cornwell, 2014.3. 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The retrospective exhibition Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch honors the work and legacy of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (American, 1890–1960), an underrecognized sculptor best known for her work in Paris during the interwar years. Organized by and first shown at the RISD Museum, this concise survey features twenty works, including sculptures in wood and marble, polychrome wood reliefs, watercolors, and documentation of archival materials and lost or destroyed work. The exhibition is presented across two galleries of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The first gallery offers a close look at this artist’s small existing but remarkable output, while the second gallery provides insight into the artist’s life and studio practice. In addition, the exhibition features a collaborative film project titled Conspiracy (2022), made by artist Simone Leigh and artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich. The presentation of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, with Carla Forbes, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Born in Rhode Island in 1890 to a Narragansett father and a Black mother, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1918. She was the first known woman of color to graduate from the prestigious art and design school. Despite her parents’ disapproval, she worked as a housekeeper after completing her public school education to pay for her tuition at RISD. Following a brief period in New York, she moved to Paris in 1922. The twelve years Nancy Elizabeth Prophet spent working in Paris mark the pinnacle of her career. Upon her arrival, she enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and showed regularly at the Salon d’Automne, Salon d’Août, and the Salon des Artistes Français. Throughout her career, despite poverty and isolation, she remained entirely dedicated to her practice. 

In Paris, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet sculpted a series of portrait heads primarily carved from hardwood. These works form the core of the exhibition. Prophet’s nine extant sculptures in the round powerfully demonstrate the artist’s skill at treating distinctive features with an idealizing and remarkably nuanced hand. The Brooklyn Museum holds in its collection one of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s wooden portrait busts, currently on view in the newly reinstalled American Art galleries, Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art. The 1930 sculpture, titled Youth (Head in Wood), is one of only about a dozen known works by Nancy Elizabeth Prophet still in existence.

“The Center for Feminist Art is particularly proud to present this groundbreaking show directly after our exhibition Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies,” says Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. “In so doing, we hope to contribute to building an expanded understanding of the transformative contributions of Black women artists to modern art and the emergence of feminism across the twentieth century.”

“We are so pleased that Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s work and story will be shared with visitors of the Brooklyn Museum,” says Tsugumi Maki, Director of the RISD Museum. “I Will Not Bend an Inch celebrates her lasting impact on the art world, particularly inspiring a new generation of artists.”

While only a handful of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s works in wood are known, her marble carvings, reliefs, and works on paper are rarer—seventeen of which are included in the exhibition, along with the artist’s remarkable Paris diary and her carving tools, which she significantly modified for her own use and treated with great care. The exhibition also includes revealing historical documents, such as studio photographs of works that have been lost, and Prophet’s correspondence with W. E. B. Du Bois, a lifetime supporter of the artist’s work. These materials provide insight into how she navigated the art world and sought to position her work as an Afro-Indigenous woman artist, resisting racist and sexist expectations. The exhibition’s title, I Will Not Bend an Inch, references a diary entry from Nancy Elizabeth Prophet in 1929, embodying her fiery and tenacious spirit and commitment to her craft in the face of immense adversity.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet returned to the United States in 1934. With the support of Du Bois, she settled in Atlanta, where she cofounded the art program at Spelman College, building on her legacy as an influential and transformative teacher. Ten years later, Prophet returned to Rhode Island, where she died in 1960. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch offers the first museum examination of this singular artist, providing a timely discussion about women artists of color of the early modern era, which preceded the emergence of the feminist, Native American, and civil rights movements of the twentieth century.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch is organized by the RISD Museum. The exhibition is curated by Dominic Molon, Interim Chief Curator & Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art; Sarah Ganz Blythe, former Deputy Director of Exhibitions, Education, and Programs; and Kajette Solomon, Social Equity and Inclusion Specialist, RISD Museum. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, with Carla Forbes, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Solid Gold Exhibition @ Brooklyn Museum - Commemorating the Museum’s 200th Anniversary

Solid Gold 

Brooklyn Museum 

November 16, 2024 – July 6, 2025 

Wreath (detail), Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E., Gold

Brooklyn Museum

Gift of George D. Pratt, 26.763 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Wreath, Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E., Gold

Brooklyn Museum

Gift of George D. Pratt, 26.763 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum Announces Solid Gold, an Expansive Exhibition Exploring Gold through Six Thousand Years of History. Commemorating the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, the exhibition features over 400 gold objects ranging from fashion, jewelry, and luxury objects to painting, sculpture, and film.

As a material and a color, gold has symbolized beauty, honor, joy, ritual, spirituality, success, and wealth for all of human history. The alluring metal has been transformed into myriad forms—from millennia-old depictions of an idealized world to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian altarpieces, from Japanese screens to haute couture fashions, one-of-a-kind jewelry, and contemporary sculptures.  

Lorenzo Monaco 

Madonna of Humility (detail), ca. 1415–20.

Tempera and tooled gold on panel with engaged frame 

Brooklyn Museum 

Gift of Mary Babbott Ladd, Lydia Babbott Stokes, 

and Frank L. Babbott, Jr. 

in memory of their father Frank L. Babbott, 34.842 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Mummy Cartonnage of a Woman

1st century C.E.

Linen, gesso, gold leaf, glass, faience 

Brooklyn Museum 

Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 69.35.

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Organized in eight sections, Solid Gold presents historical objects in visual juxtaposition and “collisions” with contemporary works and fashions, sparking dynamic conversations across time and space. The opening galleries present manifestations of ancient gold, pairing antiquities from the Museum’s collection with iconic twentieth- and twenty-first-century objects. Highlights include a large sarcophagus from Dynasty 22 (945–740 B.C.E.), which will be on display to the public for the first time in over a century. The coffin is decorated with images and inscriptions painted with yellow pigments to imitate gold inlays. An extraordinary “horde” of over 170 gold pieces from the Hellenistic period, along with a selection of ancient jewelry and chain mail that span three millennia of creation across Egypt, the Mediterranean coast, and the pre-Hispanic Americas, illustrate the ancient world’s fascination with the metal.  

Coclé artist 

Plaque with Crocodile Deity, ca. 700–900 

Gold (tumbaga) 

Brooklyn Museum 

Museum Expedition 1931, Museum Collection Fund, 33.448.12 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum 

Ebrié artist 

Snake Pendant, 19th century

Gold 

Brooklyn Museum 

Frank L. Babbott Fund, 54.16 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Contemporary pieces evoke the allure of ancient Egypt, including the prototype of a fly necklace made for legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor for the film Cleopatra (1963); couture gowns by edgy New York–based fashion house The Blonds, drawn from their Egypt Meets Disco collection (2016); and theatrical gowns from Christian Dior (2004; John Galliano, creative director) that blend elements of Egyptian history and Dior’s then-controversial “H-Line” from 1954. A 1989 dress by Azzedine Alaïa for Tina Turner exemplifies modern applications of draped chain mail. Also on view are modern interpretations of gold chains, such as the “dookie rope” and “Cuban links,” whose popularity in hip-hop culture from the 1980s onward is celebrated in the show.

The exhibition also includes a look at golden smiles. Gold disks and facial jewelry made in ancient Panama around the first millennium are presented alongside modern-day grillz (also known as fronts or golds). For practical and aesthetic reasons, such gold smiles have persisted across time and cultures.

“The Real Gold” explores the origins of gold—unearthed from diverse corners of the globe, from Nubia and South Africa to Colombia, Brazil, and beyond—tells a global story of ecological transformation, environmental impact, and the human repercussions that result from the search for this precious metal. A number of artworks, including William Kentridge’s film Mine (1991), expound on the process and impact of gold mining. Another display features an array of gold coins from the American Numismatic Society and takes a closer look at both the minting process and the role of coins in disseminating propaganda images of important figures long before newspapers and social media. Rounding out this gallery is Zadik Zadikian’s Path to Nine (2024), which juxtaposes the material histories of plastic and gold. Unlike plastic, which retains artifacts of its past when reused, gold can be melted down and re-formed without a trace. Zadikian’s monumental sculpture illuminates the invisible histories of gold with the unerasable pasts of plastic.

In the “Working with Gold” section, the exhibition examines the wide array of techniques used by artists, craftspeople, and fashion designers when working with gold as a material and as decoration. With the invention of gold coinage in ancient Lydia (present-day Turkey) in the sixth century B.C.E., gold became an increasingly democratized material. Access to and use of gold was no longer restricted to royalty or for ritual purposes. Following centuries of alchemical experiments to replicate gold and the discovery of finds like pyrite (or “fool’s gold”), the twentieth century saw technological innovations that introduced new forms of golden sparkle. New materials like laminated Lurex thread and plasticized sequins made it possible to add a twinkle to fabrics at an affordable price.

Genuine gold, however, remains coveted in fine art and haute couture fashion for both its aesthetic impact and monetary value. At Dior, Marc Bohan’s celebrated Aladin ensemble from 1962 was made from a fabric woven with 56% gold on a black ground, amplifying its opulence. Conceptual artist Yves Klein and glass artist Howard Ben Tré utilized traditional gold leaf to explore gold’s luminance in their works. Esteemed jewelers and designers such as Suzanne Belperron, Alexander Calder, Charles Loloma, Art Smith, and Elsa Schiaparelli drew on gold for its malleability, color, and shimmering glimmer that amplifies the gemstones it’s set with. The exhibition also showcases the cultural significance and exquisite craftsmanship displayed in South and Southeast Asian bridal fashion. Works on view include elegant accessories such as a Nepalese dowry necklace, crafted by hammering sheets of gold over a lightweight core, and an Indian bridal veil made of gold-wrapped silk.

Jean Dupas 

Panel from the Grand Salon of the Ocean Liner Normandie, ca. 1934

Glass, paint, silver and gold leaf, canvas backing 

Brooklyn Museum 

Gift of Marilynn and Ivan C. Karp, 85.270 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Other exhibition highlights are gold fashions and artworks from the 1920s and 1930s, such as the 1934 gold- and silver-leaf panel by designer Jean Dupas from the short-lived ocean liner Normandie. Such pieces are set alongside important Art Deco timepieces by French jeweler Cartier. Another highlight is the Museum’s Lunar Moth baby grand piano, restored and on public view for the first time since its creation in 1928. Designed by famed photographer Edward Steichen, this piano is one of only two known to exist. The remarkable instrument is constructed of mahogany inlaid with gilded bands and mirrored tesserae.

Walter van Beirendonck 

Men’s Collection, Look 6, Spring/Summer 2023 

Photo: Walter van Beirendonck

The 1970s would bring about resplendent moments of gold in fashion and culture. Driven by the opulent designs of Halston, Norman Norell, and Yves Saint Laurent, the disco era celebrated abundant sequins, pavé beading, and rhinestones. Dazzling film clips from A Chorus Line (1985), which saw performers donning gold glitter tuxedos, and The Wiz (1974), featuring the parachute designs of Norma Kamali, epitomize the era. This section culminates with the premiere episode of the 1980 television series Solid Gold, featuring Irene Cara and the Solid Gold dancers bedecked in gilded ensembles delivering a rendition of her signature song “Fame.” Fashions continue into the 1980s and 1990s with couture works by Pierre Cardin and Hubert de Givenchy, “luxury sportswear” from Gianfranco Ferré, and more recent “edgy” designs by Garth Pugh, Walter van Bierendonck, and Demna, artistic director of Balenciaga.

Wreath, Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E., Gold

Brooklyn Museum

Gift of George D. Pratt, 26.763 

Photo: Brooklyn Museum

Rashaad Newsome 

KNOT, 2014 

Single-channel video installation, 

custom artist vinyl wallpaper 

Video (color, sound): 3 min., 45 sec. (continuous loop) 

Brooklyn Museum 

Gift of the artist and De Buck Gallery 

teamLab 

Gold Waves, 2017 

Digital work, 4 channels, 6 channels,

8 channels, and 12 channels, continuous loop 

© teamLab, courtesy Pace Gallery

The final section celebrates gold as the universal symbol of achievement: a gold crown, a gold medal, a gold record, an Oscar, or a gold star on a report card. An ancient Greek gold laurel wreath dating to the third to second century B.C.E. (one of only four wholly extant wreaths in the world, and a gem from the Museum’s collection) is displayed alongside modern-day crowns, such as a spectacular gold, platinum, and diamond tiara designed by Fulco di Verdura. Some gold awards are more symbolic, such as the gold-star flags given to the mothers of military personnel who did not return from service, as documented by photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris. Many of the most coveted gold awards today are connected to performance, such as the Grammy Awards and other accolades awarded to Brooklyn-born songwriter Paul Jabara for his anthemic “Last Dance” (1978). Near the end of the exhibition, Rashaad Newsome’s KNOT (2014) is a performance-based video shown within a golden-jeweled environment; all the performers vogue in Christian Louboutin heels and would definitely receive “10s.” To close out the exhibition, visitors will walk upon the gleaming animated gold waves by international art collective teamLab, an immersive digital experience that emphasizes the fact that like the inexhaustible waves of our oceans, gold is truly eternal.

The exhibition is curated by Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture, with Catherine Futter, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Decorative Arts, and Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art.

“Solid Gold will transport visitors through the many worlds of gold, its joyful, though at times heartbreaking, histories, and its innumerable luminous expressions across cultures past and present.” says Matthew Yokobosky. “As a museum dedicated to bridging art and people in shared experiences, audiences will find inspiration, opening them to unexplored realms of beauty in their world.”

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238

www.brooklynmuseum.org

First Nations artist Nico Williams @ Brooklyn Museum - "Aaniin, I See Your Light" Exhibition

Nico Williams 

Aaniin, I See Your Light 

Brooklyn Museum 

Through October 2024

NICO WILLIAMS  

Breeze I (detail, top); Breeze II (detail, middle); 

Breeze III (detail, bottom), 2024  

Courtesy of the artist 

© Nico Williams 

First Nations artist Nico Williams (Anishinaabe, born 1989) is featured on Brooklyn Museum plaza and American Art galleries with Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light. The site-specific installation features the artist’s prismatic beadwork and large-scale iridescent jingles, which transform the Museum into a place to play, explore, and celebrate Anishinaabe ways of being." Aaniin" means both “hello” and “I see your light” in Anishinaabemowin, making the title of this interactive installation a greeting and an invitation to join in. Through this project, the Museum builds on its commitment to amplify Indigenous voices.

For generations, Anishinaabe artists have created beadwork that shares cultural knowledge and recognizes beauty as a form of medicine. Nico Williams reflects on this tradition in his Breeze series, photographs of which are installed on the Iris Cantor Plaza. Inspired by objects from the Museum’s collection of Indigenous art, the beaded patterns in this series overlay Anishinaabe geometric designs with visual motifs found in 19th-century beadwork and ribbon-work designs. Original pieces from the Breeze series is on view in the American Art galleries through August 18, 2024.

The Iris Cantor Plaza is decorated with giant jingles inspired by the colorful metal adornments that Anishinaabe women use to decorate regalia. Originally made from tobacco tins and employed for healing practices, jingles are now worn by dancers from many Indigenous nations when competing at powwows. Nico Williams’s kaleidoscopic versions are embossed with a pattern from an Anishinaabe sugar mold in the Museum’s collection (also on view in the galleries). Visitors are encouraged to gently play with the jingles and help celebrate this long-standing tradition. The outdoor installation is on view through October 2024.

“I’m excited for people to experience my work at the Brooklyn Museum this summer, both on a larger scale outside the Museum and through the smaller pieces on display in the galleries,” says Nico Williams. “It’s wonderful to receive support from the Museum. Our art is our culture, so it’s meaningful to present it to the Brooklyn community. I’m overjoyed to be able to share Anishinaabe practices and all the exciting visual components that come along with them.”

“As the first Indigenous artist ever featured on the plaza, Nico Williams both reflects upon and expands the artistic legacy of his community,” says Dare Turner, Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum. “His work commandingly transforms the front of the Museum and celebrates the enduring vibrancy of Anishinaabe culture. In doing so, he affirms Indigenous artists’ rightful place within the world of museums, within Brooklyn, and within the fabric of society at large.”

Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light is organized by Dare Turner, Curator of Indigenous Art, with Grace Billingslea, Curatorial Assistant, Arts of the Americas and Europe, Brooklyn Museum.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238 

www.brooklynmuseum.org

Artist Tracey Emin @ Faurschou New York - "Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made" Exhibition

Tracey Emin

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Faurschou New York

Through 14 July, 2024

TRACEY EMIN

Life Model Goes Mad IV, 1996

Giclee on photo rag paper, 20.9 x 20.5 in

Image courtesy of © Tracey Emin Studio

TRACEY EMIN

Life Model Goes Mad XI, 1996

Giclee on photo rag paper, 20.9 x 20.5 in

Image courtesy of © Tracey Emin Studio

”I stopped painting when I was pregnant. The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn't paint. It's like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most. I hated my body; I was scared of the dark; I was scared of being asleep. I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself, so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did. My only regret about this project was that I didn't carry on painting from that moment. It took me another five years before I started painting again.” – Tracey Emin

In 1996, British artist TRACEY EMIN (b. 1963) locked herself naked in an enclosed room at a gallery in Stockholm for 3 weeks to reconcile her anxieties and guilt around painting, a medium she had abandoned 6 years prior. After a traumatic period in the early 90s with two abortions, Tracey Emin could not physically stand the thought of painting and wanted to face her troubled relationship with the medium. Through fish-eye lenses in the exterior walls of the room, visitors could follow glimpses of Emin’s process. This exhibition at Faurschou New York marks the first time that this seminal work of art is exhibited in the United States.

Tracey Emin’s performance is not merely to be understood as catharsis, a cleansing self-therapy, but as the staging of an artistic exorcism by Tracey Emin enacting her own life in front of the viewers. Initially, Tracey Emin had intended for the paintings made inside the room to be destroyed in a fire after the performance, but she ultimately decided against it, leaving the space and works as a testimony of the physically and mentally challenging journey she had been through. The entire collection of artworks and objects in the room were preserved as an installation, which are all exhibited here in their original constellation.

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

The paintings and drawings that Tracey Emin created in the process refer to and appropriate works by male artists Egon Schiele, Yves Klein, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso. Historically, women’s access to the artist’s studio have been as models, not artists. The representation of women has been a male affair, where the female nude stands out as the most distinct example of the objectification of the female body. However, in Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, Tracey Emin positions herself in the double role as both model and artist, challenging the universal acceptance of women as objects of the male gaze. Further, Emin documented the performance in the photographic series The Life Model Goes Mad, in which she takes on the role of the model in her own studio, reclaiming female identity and sexuality.

Tracey Emin is known for her autobiographical and confessional works, with themes of femininity, abortion, and the political and stigmatic structures surrounding them. Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made stands out as a pivotal work and predecessor to a line of works, in which Tracey Emin uses her own life, trauma, and emotions as a means of expression, with the most widely recognized piece being My Bed (1998). After the exhibition in 1996 in Sweden, Tracey Emin once again had to distance herself from painting, but ultimately took it up again. Today, Tracey Emin’s artistic practice and voice to further the recognition of female artists is as vibrant and poignant as ever.

Tracey Emin by Harry Weller

© Tracey Emin Studio

TRACEY EMIN - Biography

Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London. She currently lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate, UK.

Tracey Emin has exhibited extensively including major exhibitions at Munchmuseet, Oslo (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2012); Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Kunstmuseum Bern (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2008); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga, Spain (2008); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2003); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002).

In 2007 Tracey Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd VeniceBiennale and her installation My Bed has been included in ‘In Focus’ displays at Tate Britain with Francis Bacon (2015), Tate Liverpool with William Blake and also at Turner Contemporary, Margate alongside JMW Turner (2017).

In 2011, Tracey Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012 was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.

Tracey Emin’s expressive and visceral art is one of disclosure, dealing with personal experience and heightened states of emotion. Frank and intimate but universal in its relevance, her work draws on the fundamental themes of love, desire, loss and grief, unravelling in the process the nuanced constructs of ‘woman’ and ‘self’ through probing self-exploration. ‘The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at’, she has remarked.

Wide-ranging in scope, Tracey Emin’s practice includes painting, drawing, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture and neon, all of which are transformed into highly personalised mediums for her singular voice. The genres of self-portraiture and the nude run throughout, both intricately bound up with the emotional journey of her life and the travails of her own biography. In her early work, often characterised by unflinching personal revelation, Emin makes reference to her family, childhood, and chaotic teenage years growing up in the seaside town of Margate. Her relationships, pregnancies and abortions are recounted through drawings, photographs, found objects and videos in a manner that is neither tragic nor sentimental and which resonates deeply with the audience.

FAURSCHOU NEW YORK

148 Green Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222

www.faurschou.com

TRACEY EMIN: EXORCISM OF THE LAST PAINTING I EVER MADE 

FAURSCHOU NEW YORK, 21 October, 2023 – 14 July, 2024 

Yuichi Idaka and László Moholy-Nagy, photographs from 1925 to 1946 @ Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn - War Bonds

War Bonds

Yuichi Idaka and László Moholy-Nagy, 

photographs from 1925 to 1946

Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn

March 15 – May 6, 2023

While many may have heard of László Moholy-Nagy—the legendary Hungarian artist and photographer best known for his work at the Bauhaus, and for the 1937 founding of the New Bauhaus, later called the Institute of Design in Chicago—fewer know of Yuichi Idaka. The son of Japanese immigrants, Idaka studied at Moholy-Nagy’s school from 1942 to 1945. In 1945, Idaka was hired by Moholy-Nagy to teach film and photography at the school. During the time, at Moholy-Nagy’s request, Idaka printed a number of images that Moholy-Nagy had made in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. These prints, alongside Idaka’s work from the 1940s, are the subject of the exhibition.

Idaka’s close collaboration with Moholy-Nagy took place during a brutal time for Japanese Americans. The United States’ internment of Japanese people began in 1942 and ended in 1946, and anti-Japanese persecution was rampant. One can only imagine that Moholy-Nagy—as a Jewish person who had fled Nazi Germany less than a decade prior—saw echoes in the U.S. of what he had just left behind in Europe. (Moholy-Nagy’s work was in fact featured in the infamous “Degenerate Art”exhibition organized by the Nazi Party in 1937, which purported that such art was of a primitive, inferior quality.) Moholy-Nagy, almost 20 years Idaka’s senior, seems to have taken the young photographer under his wing and supported Idaka’s creative output during a time of real political danger.

As if to encapsulate this parallel, Moholy-Nagy asked Idaka to print images of Germany that he had taken not long before leaving the country for good. In one oblique photograph shot from the Berlin Radio Tower (perhaps the only existing print of this image, as the negatives are believed to have been lost) the line of a fence curves and bisects the landscape, a dizzying abstraction of the snow-covered ground. Idaka’s later curving abstractions—photograms à la Moholy-Nagy—reflect this geometry, which he then brings with him to the streets of Chicago and beyond. In the gallery, the two artists’ work is exhibited side by side, perhaps for the first time since 1951, when both photographers were featured in the “Abstraction in Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a Hungarian artist and a faculty Bauhaus Master from 1923-1928. In 1937, Moholy-Nagy founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago, since 1944 known as the Institute of Design, which in 1949 became a degree granting department at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Moholy-Nagy wrote several books including Painting, Photography, Film (1927) and Vision in Motion (1947). In 2003, the Moholy-Nagy Foundation was created to foster and share knowledge about the artist’s life and work. In 2016, he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Yuichi “Eugene” Idaka (1914-2012) was born to Japanese immigrants in Seattle, WA. After spending significant time during his childhood in Japan, he moved to Chicago in 1928 and helped run a Japanese Camera Club in the city. Idaka studied at the Institute of Design in Chicago from 1942-45 and taught their part-time from 1945-47 while working as a freelance photographer. He opened his own photography and design studio at 49 West Ontario – along with Angelo Testa and Edgar Bartolucci, fellow students at the Institute of Design – and later specialized in architectural photography. His work was featured in publications including Florida Architecture magazine, Architectural Digest, and The New York Times.

HIGHER PICTURES GALLERY

16 Main Street, Ground Floor, Brooklyn, New York 11201

www.higherpictures.com

Letha Wilson @ Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn - Folds and Faults

Letha Wilson: Folds and Faults

Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn

Through February 18, 2023

Higher Pictures Generation presents new work by Letha Wilson in her third solo presentation with the gallery.

The Landscape Objects on view continue Letha Wilson’s exploration of the interlocking relationships between sculpture, photography, and our natural environment. The sculptures are made from a carefully limited set of materials: a metal plate hinged with industrial fabric provides the substrate for foliage, stone, earth, and sky photographed in color. Wilson’s photographs, printed onto cut sheets of copper, steel, or brass, are made to fold and bend in countless ways. The objects can stand up, stretch out, lie flat, and hang on the wall; there is no right answer here, no single definitive form.

Each piece is an invitation for the viewer to collaborate with the artist. Recalling Lygia Clark’s Bichos sculptures in their playful, generous, and iterative nature, they challenge our habits of viewing: in place of nature portrayed as beautiful, static, and modern, Letha Wilson offers us sets of questions and possibilities.

Letha Wilson’s distinctive understanding of landscape comes in part from having grown up in Colorado. Her representations of the mountains, sky, and vegetation draw on many different traditions. Historical photography is clearly present, as well as the popular vernacular of postcard art, hyperrealist painting of the 1960s, and the saturated color of Hollywood westerns. To all these sources Wilson brings her own irreverent humor and an exhilarating sense of freedom.

Letha Wilson (b. 1976, Honolulu) earned her BFA from Syracuse University and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Letha Wilson attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009, and her work has been exhibited widely, including at Mass MoCA, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art. She has been awarded artist residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, among others. Letha was awarded the Windgate Artist Residency at SUNY Purchase in Fall 2022. She works in Craryville and Brooklyn, New York.

HIGHER PICTURES GENERATION

16 Main Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201

www.higherpictures.com

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Enrico Riley @ Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY - Stand

Enrico Riley: Stand

Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY

September 10 – October 29, 2022

ENRICO RILEY

Together 2, 2022

Oil on canvas, 58 x 54 in

Courtesy of Enrico Riley 

and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco and New York

ENRICO RILEY

Together IV, 2022

Oil on canvas, 58 x 54 in

Courtesy of Enrico Riley 

and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco and New York

Jenkins Johnson Projects presents ENRICO RILEY’s solo exhibition Stand. The exhibition explores the materiality of paint and the expressive potential of painted images in relation to issues around identity and visibility. This is Enrico Riley’s second solo exhibition at Jenkins Johnson Projects.

Enrico Riley’s new series of paintings investigate the agency of bodies moving through space with dance. The artist uses formal techniques to expose the issues surrounding mobility through the flattening and abstracting of figures within a liminal space. Enrico Riley’s new body of work is inspired by and expands on the rich and complex traditions of hip-hop and other forms of street dance and in particular the way these activities allow individuals to expand their presence in space. This new series is a result of the artist thinking about hip-hop, break dance, and rap culture of the 1980s and 1990s and reflecting on the significance of these expressions on American culture. The artist uses a vibrant palette of monochromes such as magentas, greens, and yellows to highlight the role fashion played, with sneakers and polo shirts turning into identity markers. The result on the canvas is an homage to energy and expression. Building space through color and absences, Enrico Riley invites the viewer to question the ephemerality of the body.

Flattening the space and abstracting the figures, Enrico Riley mixes forms, bodies, colors, and atmosphere, to visualize how bodies can become vehicles of colors. Loosely thinking about the California Light and Space artists, Enrico Riley’s work carries a strong impression of color light that floods out of his canvases into the space. The simplicity and ease of the painted forms suggest a range of attitudes and, at times, contradict themselves in unexpected ways. For example, Enrico Riley often depicts the human form accompanied by complicated shadows which create a glitch in the perceptual space, making the bodies solid or light — and always in flux. Blurring the line between figuration and abstraction, Enrico Riley invites the viewer to keep an open mind and reading of his paintings, and to reflect on dance as a form of personal, social, and political expression.

ENRICO RILEY (b. 1973, Westbury, CT) is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Visual Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Prize in Painting and holds the George Frederick Jewitt Professorship in Art at Dartmouth College. Enrico Riley has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the American Academy in Rome, the University of New Hampshire, and Jenkins Johnson Projects. He has participated in group exhibitions at “State of the Art 2020” at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art and “Black Bodies on the Cross” at The Hood Museum. His work is in institutions including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Hood Museum, and Nasher Sculpture Center. Enrico Riley has an MFA in painting from Yale University and a BA in Visual Studies from Dartmouth College. Enrico Riley lives and works in Vermont and New Hampshire.

The exhibition is accompanied with a catalogue featuring an essay by Connie Choi, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem. 

JENKINS JOHNSON PROJECTS

207 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225

www.jenkinsjohnsongallery.com

Bianca Nemelc, Joiri Minaya, Monica Hernandez, Uzumaki Cepeda, Veronica Fernandez @ Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York - De Lo Mío, curated by Tiffany Alfonseca

De Lo Mío - Bianca Nemelc, Joiri Minaya, Monica Hernandez, Uzumaki Cepeda, Veronica Fernandez. Curated by Tiffany Alfonseca

Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY

13 February - 27 March 2021

Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York, presents De Lo Mío. A group exhibition curated by artist Tiffany Alfonseca, with an accompanying essay by curator and writer César García-Alvarez, features works by Bianca Nemelc, Joiri Minaya, Monica Hernandez, Uzumaki Cepeda, and Veronica Fernandez. De Lo Mío brings together a focused selection of works by an emerging group of women artists with varying relationships to their Dominican heritage. Originating from Tiffany Alfonseca’s ongoing interest in her generation’s evolving connections to a motherland, De Lo Mío envisions identity not as a definable set of associations but rather as a spectrum through which multiple personal and collective pasts as well as lived experiences come to forge how people exist. 

The artists included in this exhibition assemble a constellation of positions—each sited at differing distances from a shared culture—that challenge the notion that geography alone bonds people. Instead, each artist puts forth a unique perspective that push back against a history of art that thirsts for cohesive but oversimplified narratives. Intended to be a spirited dialogue between the work of artists who don’t see the world the same, rather than as a friendly sharing of common opinions, De Lo Mío is an introduction to a host of future projects Tiffany Alfonseca is developing with the intention to expand art histories of the Caribbean.

While each artist brings their own voice to the exhibition, their work does intersect, at times, along some difficult but necessary questions—like how does one pay tribute to Dominican visual culture without reinforcing stereotypes forged by institutions and popular culture? or how do we remain connected to our roots beyond immediate generations? or how do AfroLatinx lives find solidarity with African-American ones while not dismissing the meaningful specificities of their Latinidad? De Lo Mío will not pretend to provide answers to these questions but hopes to ignite a much belated public conversations about these issues. 

TIFFANY ALFONSECA (b. 1994) is a Bronx- based Dominican-American mixed media artist who creates vibrant and colorful artworks that celebrates Black and Afro-Latinx diasporic culture. Alfonseca continuously taps into her Afro-Dominican roots and leverages it as a conceptual cantilever that provides a dynamic framework for her artistic practice. Moreover, her work aims to visually articulate that the Black and Afro-Latinx diaspora does not exist within a monolith, but that these communities are a cultural cornucopia that is vast, varied, and complex. Alfonseca’s artwork is an intricate combination of beauty, diversity, and multilingualism that exemplifies the strength of the Black and Afro-Latinx diaspora. Through immersion and rumination, Alfonseca utilizes these experiences as reference material within her work as she toils to construct new narratives and build a universe that is reflective of her upbringing as a Dominican-American woman in the Bronx. These narratives harken towards dialogue about womanhood, colorism, class, family, ritual, and memory; all of which are building blocks in her creation of an ontological framework that is responsive to how she sees and experiences the world. Alfonseca has been included in such publications as Harper’s BAZAAR, Juxtapoz Magazine, and Artsy. Her work is included in collections such as The Dean Collection and the Perez Art Museum Miami. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts.  

BIANCA NEMELC (b. 1991) is a figurative painter whose work explores the connection between the female form and the natural world. Born and raised in New York City, Bianca’s work is inspired by her own investigative journey into her identity, paying homage to her heritage through the use of many hues of brown that make up the figures in her work. The worlds within her paintings are loosely inspired by the tropical and Caribbean landscapes where her families are originally from and her roots can be traced back to. Through her work, Bianca Nemelc aims to highlight the beautiful and symbiotic relationship between nature and the female body. Bianca Nemelc has been in several group exhibition in NY, SF and London. She recently presented works at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2019.  

JOIRI MINAYA (b. 1990) is a Dominican-United Statesian, NY based multi-disciplinary artist. She investigates stereotypes around Dominican womanhood in an attempt to understand where these constructions originated from and how they circulate. Often the stereotypes she finds are related to exoticism and expectations of entertainment. For this exhibition, Joiri Minaya contrinbutes her collage works, mixing fragmented bodies found from google searches of the phrase ‘Domanican Woman’. Joiri Minaya has exhibited across the Caribbean, the U.S. and internationally. She has recently received a NY Artadia award and BRIC’s Colene Brown Art Prize, and has received grants from foundations like Nancy Graves, Rema Hort Mann, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She been awarded in two Dominican biennials (XXV Concurso León Jimenes; XXVII National Biennial) and has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Smack Mellon, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Red Bull House of Art, LES Printshop, Socrates Sculpture Park, Art Omi and Vermont Studio Center. Minaya attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales (DR), the Chavón School of Design, and received her BFA from Parsons the New School for Design. 

MONICA HERNANDEZ (b. 1995) is a Bronx-based artist born in the Dominican Republic. Her paintings are imagined scenes that draw from a well of tucked away experiences ranging from religious guilt, to body anxiety, to realizing the first time the voice in your head could be switched from Spanish to English. She explores the body, desire, sexuality, identity, and representation. Hernandez has been including in publication such as Cultured Mag and Artforum. She has been is several group shows including at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. She received her BFA from Hunter Collage. 

UZUMAKI CEPEDA (b. 1995) textile tableau acts as a safe space for black and brown people all over the world. While addressing the stigmas of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and colorism that often affect queer people and women who feel unprotected by our current American policies and way of life. Her practice consists of transforming every day often found objects with brightly-colored faux fur to create interactive installations informed by traditional iconography of domestic spaces. Using her dream-like and vibrant work drawn from her childhood imagination growing up both on the islands of the Dominican Republic and in the Bronx. Bringing two worlds together. Uzumaki’s interactive installations have been shown from Los Angeles, California, to Montreal, Canada, and all the way overseas to Tokyo, Japan. She has been featured in print and digital publications including Forbes, Teen Vogue, Paper Magazine, Nylon Magazine, i-D, HypeBAE, L.A. Weekly, and The Fader. 

VERONICA FERNANDEZ (b. 1998) is a mixed media artist that discusses relationships between people and their environments. Frequently using personal memorabilia and experiences as a canon for her pieces, she explores the various ways we perceive our ever-fluctuating memories over time and the atmospheres around us. Using colorful, varying sized canvases full of an eclectic array of textures, paint is used as an expressive vehicle to highlight themes of disconnection, impermanence, and reconstruction, meanwhile putting a focus on the alternate realities we enter when reflecting on our past and present. In these pieces, she  uses techniques of fragmentation, and abstraction of space to form narratives about individuals and how the factors of their environment influence them, meanwhile discussing the indefinite roles we can take on in the world at any moment. Fernandez has shown nationally and internationally. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts. 

JENKINS JOHNSON PROJECTS

209 Ocean Avenue, Booklyn, NY 11225

www.jenkinsjohnsongallery.com

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