Jeffery Meris

Jeffery Meris

Work from Catch a Stick of Fire.

“Jeffrey Meris’s hanging sculptures, reminiscent of chandeliers, are made of aluminium piping, ceramic vessels, and spider plants. These materials, along with Meris’s shift from working with steel and iron to aluminum, a lighter, and, as Meris says, a more “intimate” metal—often found in domestic spaces for plumbing—can be seen as a metaphor for the shift in the artist’s practice, once centered around conversations of racialized trauma, to one focused on a steadfast devotion to healing, cleansing, and rituals of care.” – James Cohan Gallery

Jacolby Satterwhite

Jacolby Satterwhite

Work from his oeuvre.

“Through performance, video, 3D animation, installation, and sculpture, Jacolby Satterwhite explores themes of memory, desire, and ritual. He is interested in process as a metanarrative: the narrative between past, present, and future, and how that process relates a broad, shared experience. Often using his mother’s drawings as a resource (she created thousands of schematics and inventions centered on consumer culture, medicine, sex, astrology, and philosophy), he propagates her two-dimensional gestures and contextualizes related themes. His visual dialogue reads something like an extraterrestrial journal, a poetic scape where there is no sense of physical place and no parameters of time. Satterwhite’s methods are radical, and the imagery surreal, yet he maintains a visual course of formalist aesthetics and composition.” – Morán Morán

Rick Silva and Nicolas Sassoon

Rick Silva and Nicolas Sassoon

Work from CORES.

It is well worth seeing the videos (that I could not embed without issue) and reading the essay for each fragment.

“Here, on the lithosphere, where the earth meets the sky, there exists a long history of how rocks and stones can be seen as images and can be read as texts. A multitude of worlds has been interpreted through surfaces of stones as they depict worlds.[1] Imaginary or not, they reflect historical events — a vertiginous array of scales, landscapes, and — sometimes — ruined cities. But they also include abstract forms and lines that offer geological points of origin for questions, including those of art and aesthetics. From the poetics of stones to the geological, we are nowadays more likely to count, classify, and catalogue than romanticise: geological surfaces and stratifications are measured and mapped such as in the cartographic codes for lithographic patterns. From sandy and silty dolomite to sandstone and shale, quartzite and granite to igneous rock the surface and subsurface are a slowly-unfolding inscription of different minerals.

The following … fragments are reflections on rocks, technicity, duration, and place evoked by CORES, the series of digital animations featuring 3D-scanned rocks by Rick Silva and Nicolas Sassoon.” – CORES

Sadie Barnette

Sadie Barnette

Work from Inheritance.

“This new body of work uses installation, sculpture, photography, wallpaper and large-scale drawing to examine the artist’s familial legacy. Employing archival material–such as the 500-page dossier compiled by the FBI surveilling her father, Rodney Barnette, during his time in the Black Panther Party–the artist wields the personal nature of generational inheritance to inflect international political struggle with urgency, collapsing temporal distinctions of past and present. The solo presentation at the gallery runs simultaneously with the two-venue exhibition, Sadie Barnette: Legacy and Legend, at Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College and Pitzer College Art Galleries, on view until December 18, 2021…” – Jessica Silverman Gallery

Rachel Youn

Rachel Youn

Work from their oeuvre.

“Rachel Youn is an artist living and working in St. Louis, MO. They use sculpture and new media to poke fun at hierarchal narratives embedded in objects and lifestyles. Sourcing from home furnishing stores and oriental goods peddled on craigslist, their work collapses notions of authenticity and artifice through the lens of identity” – bio via De:Formal

SANGREE

SANGREE

Work from their oeuvre.

“SANGREE is the first
SANGREE is a well know figure among contortion enthusiasts
SANGREE is unavailable
SANGREE is from 5 to 8 pm from now on
SANGREE is away
SANGREE is well known in the vicinity
SANGREE is a subdivision
SANGREE is a throwback
SANGREE is plotting
SANGREE is rife with philosophical debate and charged with enough sexual tension to ignite a water park
SANGREE is born
SANGREE is opened
SANGREE is part of the group
SANGREE is based on the true story of a bride who ran away with her lover on her wedding night
SANGREE is an extraordinarily unique horror film that takes the viewer on an unforgettable trip following the life of an insane ex
SANGREE is abuzz with activity and news these days
SANGREE is the closest you’re going to get to a genuinely psychological and intelligent truth.
SANGREE is a psychedelic freudian exploration of the mind’s and of culture’s attitude towards sexuality and repression as told through a slasher film
SANGREE is one of the brightest new bands i have seen in a long time
SANGREE is a haunting
SANGREE is a medium maturing
SANGREE is setting a new standard for the hardcore and metal scene
SANGREE is a spanish word
SANGREE is a poetic masterpiece
SANGREE is pura too motherfucker
SANGREE is not a deep one
SANGREE is a certain woman who has three forms
SANGREE is arguably the best
SANGREE is an early
SANGREE is formed from the proverbial ashes of another victim
SANGREE is a wonderful animal
SANGREE is relatively weak in combat
SANGREE is a drug lord skilled in the art of black magic
SANGREE is considered good for baking and boiling
SANGREE is a tough horse
SANGREE is a bitch
SANGREE is the official journal of the entire world
SANGREE is available in a wide variety of media formats
SANGREE is a powerful and violent film that does not follow normal conventions
SANGREE is about doing it to yourself
SANGREE is by far my fave
SANGREE is mysterious
SANGREE is the code
SANGREE is the love
SANGREE is for everyone

They started working collaboratively in 2009 on an homologue photography zine that meant to explore the most puzzling subjects on human history through images made by the artists. This visual investigation on many different subjects such as nature, technology, popular culture, the cosmos, history, etc progressively migrated to different media giving way to the creation of two ever-growing archives: a photography and a drawing one. Both archives are continuously being updated and are regarded as pools of ideas from which different projects may emerge.

The extensive range of subjects they have explored throughout a decade has led them to develop an interest in materiality and the use of different kinds of media which spans from traditional techniques, to craftful hand made processes, to large scale architectural installations.” – SANGREE

Camille Jodoin-Eng

Camille Jodoin-Eng

Work from their oeuvre.

“Camille Jodoin-Eng’s work approaches the interplay between physical and psychological space by engaging with spatial and sensory properties such as light, dimensions, and perspectives. Often inspired by shrines and temples as spaces devoted to reflecting on otherworldly existences, her work engages with repetition and symbology to create a physical manifestation of infinite space. Jodoin-Eng has developed a studio practice that involves drawing, sculpture, fabrication, installation, and a growing visual language of personal symbols.” – Patel Brown

Leonard Suryajaya

Leonard Suryajaya

Work from False Idol.

“… Leonard Suryajaya’s series False Idols pushes the boundaries of representation of his/our intimate relationships. Using his loved ones as subjects in his bizarre play, Suryajaya creates elaborate scenes that are beautiful, absurd and at times disturbing. He works with several different mediums to stretch our point of view on immigration and culture norms. Suryajaya’s collages are immediately curious and unusual, yet at the same time highlight a tenderness that is very familiar. Along with photographs and video, Suryajaya also uses text as part of his imagery, words appear handwritten in installations, prints are created from his text chains, or emails superimposed into his images. The mix of words and images create an elaborate stage for multi-generational and racially diverse cast who perform his unique visual language. In the end, his work highlights that being different comes at an awkward emotional cost even though it’s something we all understand.

Play, Mess, and imagination all touch within the frames of Leonard Suryajaya. There are exquisite disruptions of patterns and people. fingertips buzzing, the colorful leaves of plastics and fruits, and mouths almost always stuffed with something extraterrestrial. Suryajaya photographs, films, and makes art of something equally unexpected, as it is familiar and ancestral. False Idol explores themes of camaraderie and theatre, fleeing a homeland and putting down roots. A Chinese-Indonesian immigrant, Suryajaya is ready for powers and authorities that want to question the legitimacy of his every last morsel. “I’m going to make this work over the course of my Green Card application. I want to use this body of work as a way to document, reimagine, and expose that process”.

Suryajaya is possessed by navigating respect with pushiness. The rules of government and patriarchy are in place to watch and pry; the works of False Idol fight back with astute dexterity. Why simplify anything? In these works there is bargaining and resilience. The world that lurks inside Suryajaya’s frames seems both informed by an established visual history as much as it seeks to find a new place in the future on a planet not too dissimilar from this one. Or perhaps that place is still Earth, one where limitations have been outsmarted. Where the bizarre, unexpected, and queer can co-mingle and couple.

Suryajaya stands in the middle of streets, collecting, gathering, thinking, and finding all these simple things so they can be exposed for how outlandish they are capable of being. Our world no longer has to be what we’ve come to expect of its we’re better than that, this world deserves better than us if we can’t push ourselves towards the discovery that combining opposites will empower us. Our trauma is real and will make things difficult. We will either be for one another or we will be against one another. Suryajaya offers us this confusion as a tool to see possibility.” – Carrie Levy for CENTER.

In Regards to Nostalgia

In Regards to Nostalgia at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Works by Mark Albain, Jesse Ly, and Aubrey Theobald.

Curated by Sso-Rha Kang, text via Under Main Magazine by C.M. Turner.

In October, the Art Academy of Cincinnati’s Pearlman Gallery opened In Regards to Nostalgia, an interdisciplinary group show exploring the poetics and complexities of nostalgia’s many forms. Featuring works in sculpture, painting, and photographic installation by artists Mark Albain, Jesse Ly, and Aubrey Theobald, In Regards to Nostalgia is the most recent exhibition curated by Sso-Rha Kang, the newly appointed Director of Galleries and Outreach at Northern Kentucky University.

In Regards to Nostalgia presents affective artworks placed into an exhibition design that heightens the effectiveness of those qualities. The works on view and Kang’s curatorial plan create a quietly energetic environment, where visual rhythms and aesthetic conversations between pieces occupy space. The works are well balanced throughout the gallery, creating moments for repose and response, to step back and place oneself into the artworks. Three large-scale photographic installations in black and white set the overall tone of the exhibition, drawing viewers into affective mind, body, and picture spaces. The effect is emotionally immersive, but not physically overwhelming. Two sculptures by Theobald help to break up the gallery area, encouraging the viewer to weave through the floor plan as though wading through a bank of memories. This physical consideration draws an acute parallel between the works on view and the exhibition design, where the viewers’ bodies are connected to the corporeal and spatial concerns of the exhibiting artists. The implication here is that nostalgia resides as much in the body as it does in the mind.

At the entry of the gallery, visitors are met by Albain’s Cage’s Night Blooming Cereus, a quiet image of a wilting flower blossom captured in soft grays. The photograph documents a plant propagated from a cactus belonging to composer John Cage. Albain’s accompanying statement for the work is poetic and opaque, giving the viewer little insight into his photographs. Instead, it creates a narrative connection to the works that brings the viewer into a voyeuristic and slightly uncomfortable space, like reading the pages of someone’s diary that they purposely left open. This sensation also applies to Albain’s photographic installation They Whisper in The Wings (J’s Back Study). Here, the artist evokes a stronger state of sense-memory. An abstracted swath of skin becomes a stand-in for lovers past and present – a constellation of moles and blemishes traced over by fingers, recognized in the bath, studied in bed.

Throughout the exhibition, Kang taps into the well of emotions surrounding the poetry of the past, whether lived, imagined, documented, or perceived. In the statement for the show, the curator notes, “A marker of moments situated in the poetic, nostalgia is a mysterious and potent encounter that exists in the complexities of loss and longing for something that once was.” Notions of loss and longing are overtly evident in Theobald’s Without These Winds I Would Be Invisible. Constructed of Portland cement, resin, varnish, preserved flora, a love letter, and printed ephemera atop a custom plinth, the series of three sculptural works traffics in the material of memorials. A statement from the artist relays: “Each monument presents a desperate grasp to connect grief to mundane labor and daily affect, to pay homage to the objects our lost ones leave behind, to the stability memories do offer, to the (always) unbearable weight of loss nostalgia can bring up out of the blue.”Theobald offers object displays a viewer can breathe life and memories into. Her material choices echo the materials of history, longevity, and humanity. She presents the brick road of countless walkways, the concrete of everywhere, and through these access points, we are able to feel a connection to the artist’s history, as well as our own.

Where Albain attunes to the overtly poetic and Theobald evokes the physicality in nostalgia, Ly’s installations cast an atmospheric acknowledgment throughout the gallery space, creating photographic spaces for reflection. His accompanying statement recognizes that the photographic process contains the contradictory act of simultaneously attempting to eternalize a moment while witnessing and acknowledging its end. With this understanding, Ly’s images operate within what he calls “the post-condition of all passing moments.” His pieces in the evolving series Still There and Here combine a backdrop of open beach views behind framed images that reference nature, freeze objects in time, and obscure bodies through motion and framing. Here, Ly works to hold the ephemeral static. His works function as stand-ins for memories – sometimes hazy, sometimes crisp, partially narrative, partially abstract, liminal and fleeting. Caught up within this imagery are aspects of vacation aesthetics, long summer days, the excitement and expanse of youth – frantic energy and the languor of heat, times of transition, times of estrangement. Perhaps it’s the artist’s recognition of the photographic condition that allows these pieces to carry so much resonance, inviting viewers into richly reflexive space. Regardless, Ly’s works create a through-line that ties the entire exhibition together by engaging with the multiple registers of nostalgia explored by Albain and Theobald in the poetic, the corporeal, the spatial, and the photographic. The gestalt achieved through Kang’s curatorial efforts brings together the artists’ works in a wonderfully affective and emotionally immersive exhibition.

For the curator, this is all very much the plan. Kang views exhibition-making as a form of world-building, in response to collective aesthetic experiences. She relates:

“Perhaps practical but essential to how I investigate aesthetic experience is through exhibition planning and design. How works are oriented in space can drastically effect how the show is experienced and felt. I’m interested in how various artists/singular works converse in space, which creates potential for works to collectively contribute to a wider narrative and allows something as ambiguous as mood to be felt within the exhibition.”

In Regards to Nostalgia is the third in a series of exhibitions that hold a similar resonance, but diverge in focal themes. The previous shows in the series, Sentiments of Here (2020, Wave Pool, Cincinnati, OH) and Gestures of Slowness (2020, The Carnegie, Covington, KY) focused on landscape and the body, respectively, while In Regards to Nostalgia homes in on the theme of memory. Beyond the conceptual and installation-based connections between Kang’s curatorial efforts, these three exhibitions are further linked by the inclusion of certain artists (artist Snow Yu was featured in both Sentiments of Here and Gestures of Slowness, Albain was featured in both Sentiments of Here and In Regards to Nostalgia). For Kang, working with specific artists multiple times while adding in new voices to continue conceptual and aesthetic conversations is key. She sees this move as both an act of building community and a key to successful exhibition planning, noting that her process is “intensely collaborative.”

That collaborative impulse is a current that runs strongly through In Regards to Nostalgia, and continues in Kang’s work at Northern Kentucky University. As the newly appointed Director of Galleries and Outreach, she recently launched a performance series that responds to the brutalist architecture specific to the NKU campus, with an inaugural performance by multimedia artist collective Froghole? (Cincinnati, OH). As evidenced through her thoughtful and careful curatorial work in shows like In Regards to Nostalgia, it is clear that Kang’s approach to exhibition planning and design can only serve to strengthen the creative communities she works with.

Noel W Anderson

Noel W Anderson

Work from Blak Origin Movement.

“Blak Origin Moment is a solo exhibition of works by the Louisville, Kentucky-born, New York-based artist Noel W Anderson. The exhibition and book delve into Anderson’s ongoing exploration of the history of black consciousness as he wrestles with the legacies of images, events, and materials.

In a practice that continues to conceptually evolve, Anderson has become known for his investigations into the make-up of black male identity via the medium of textiles. From rugs to mechanically produced tapestries, he weaves a spectrum of fibres with appropriated images and objects, used for just long enough to fray their edges and challenge legibility.

Blak Origin Moment continues this course as Anderson pushes his study into the fraught post-Ferguson era of Black Lives Matter and heightened racial tensions in the United States. Prompted by the provocative question “When did you know you were black?” he collects oral, visual and artifact-based histories to ultimately restructure the origin and genealogy of black consciousness. His works attempt to locate an elusive black essence by way of images, sound, and objects which, for Anderson, “evoke moments where racial recognition is heightened”, but resolution is deferred.

The series was first exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (February 10 – June 18, 2017), curated by Steven Matijcio.

The second iteration of the work was exhibited recently at the Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN) (October 11, 2019 – January 12, 2020).” – Noel W Anderson