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Alicia Adamerovich, Joseph Buckley, Maho Donowaki, Hilary Doyle, Clark Filio, Caroline Garcia, Eliot Greenwald, Exene Karros, Nat Meade, Tammy Nguyen, Louis Osmosis, Georgica Pettus, Johanna Robinson, Sistership TV, Alicia Smith, and Astrid Terrazas
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Alicia SmithNagualism, 2017Performance/Video3:07
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THE SYMBOLISTS: LES FLEURS DU MAL
In the gory aftermath of the Third Republic and the 1871 Commune, the Symbolist movement of 19th-century France turned away from the scientific rationalism and Realist reportage of an industrializing age. These artists and poets, disillusioned with the banal repetition of art in their time—“copy in copy, simulation in simulation”—looked instead to the fantastical stuff of dreams, myth, and religion to reflect on the inexorable press of modernity. Symbolism originated in literature through Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs de Mal, as well as the poetry of Stephane Mallarmé who famously wrote, “To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment to be found in the poem… suggestion, that is the dream.” The aesthetic was developed and expanded by artists from Gustave Moreau and Gustav Klimt to Frida Kahlo and Paul Gaugin. Esoteric in its subjectivity, the Symbolist goal was not to represent but to suggest an amorphous and affective mood, familiar but unfixed.
That past resonates with recognitions of the present—we look back into the mirrored glass of a similarly worrying reality, pinging with the delivery of new daily records and colored by the amber alerts of state curfews during protest. Challenging the escapist impulse with criticality and humor, the artists in this show are not dealing in pure abstraction, rather, finding ways to express injustice, trepidation, and hope for the future through new figures, contemporary or invented. Drawing on the symbolic material of popular culture, astrology, the internet, and beyond, this show responds to the expansion of virtual worlds which, as ever, run in tandem with reality.
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Astrid Terrazasa fruitful being, tú rana, 2020acrylic on canvas44 x 69 in.
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Tammy NguyenA way to the Good Light 1, 2021digital print letterpress and collage on paper12 x 8.25 in.
The Real Real
Confronting the borders between perceived worlds, several works in the exhibition pose a metaphysical inquiry into the space between symbolic representation and reality. Clark Filio’s Truman Show, drawn from the popular film of the same name, addresses the impossible moment when Truman climbs a staircase along a painted backdrop of the sky to escape the surveilled and fabricated world that has been a home and cage for his entire life. Tammy Nguyen’s collages play on a similar theme through the formal, syntactical, and allegorical qualities of the letter ‘O’ in a re-imagining of Plato’s allegory of the cave.
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However, Hilary Doyle’s The Innocents, Johanna Robinson’s Imagination is defined by what lies outside of it, and Astrid Terrazas’s a fruitful being, tú rana, suggest that there can be no such escape—reality and fiction are interchangeable, composed of the infinite imaginaries of our positionalities, desires, and dreads. Doubly representing the immensity of an ocean in a rectangle of blue pastel and the sluggish action of a fishbowl brimming with glycerin, Maho Donowaki’s I’ll Swim If You Swim Too humorously indicates the futility in the search for an unmediated reality.
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Maho DonowakiI’ll Swim If You Swim Too, 2021leftover Pringles from street, fishbowl, air pump, air stone, pebbles, artificial plants, glycerin, step ladder, cement, resin, plastic, metal powder, pigment, acrylic, oil pastel96 x 66 x 35 in.
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Hilary DoyleThe Innocents, 2020acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 in. -
Johanna RobinsonImagination is defined by what lies outside of it, 2020oil on cheesecloth over canvas24 x 18 in.
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Tammy NguyenYolanda, 2018mixed media on panel40 x 30 in.
76.2 x 101.6 cm
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Clark FIlioTruman Show, 2019oil on canvas20 x 16 in.
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Louis OsmosisSeat, 2021upholstery cushion car seat, rope, plastic twine, ratchet straps, bungee cords, shoelaces, yarn, clear vinyl seat cover22 x 22 x 17 in.
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Tammy NguyenA way to the Good Light 2, 2021digital print letterpress and collage on paper12 x 8.25 in.
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Tammy NguyenA way to the Good Light 3, 2021digital print letterpress and collage on paper12 x 8.25 in.
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Maho DonowakiI Wish I Was A Land Of Sand, 2021single channel video4:21 minsedition of 4 with 2 artist proofs
the fragment held in the hand
conforms to the fragment holding
the fragment — the body fragment of hand
knows its part holding its part
and knows that part’s reason — is to be part
fragment holding fragment
body holding earth — I saw people
they were all me I saw objects
could not any be me I walked
in my lower both — inside the removal
of not me I tried to live in both
— who is sacred to the word sacred —
exfoliate the alphabet fragment spoken
is word part — the fragment spoken
conforms to the fragment lived
— time holding both calendar and both
being us all the time inside our other us
is our living breathing both
—Edwin Torres, To the Rendered Excision (from Xoeteox, Wave Books)
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Clark FIlioDiogenes, 2021oil on canvas78 x 54 in.
Criticality of Modern Symbols
Other works symbolically address social injustice and, in several cases, call attention to the prejudice veiled within unexamined icons. Clark Filio’s Bather and Paradise Lost query how we read the allegorical nudes of historical painting today, and his portrait of Diogenes—drawn from an 1882 painting by John William Waterhouse—depicts the Greek cynic who, through his ascetic lifestyle, criticized the conventions of Athenian society.
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Meanwhile, in performative videos where the artist’s body is bruised and overwhelmed by forms of sustenance, Maho Donowaki illustrates a point of tension between gestures of care and oppression. Nat Meade's ridiculous if sympathetic portraits of stoic male figures depict the obsolescence of masculine heroism. Joseph Buckley’s George Slaying Dragon recasts England’s patron saint as an enslaved individual, rebelling and, in the process of defeating a snarling white dragon—representing, perhaps, the capitalist slaver—sending it to its death beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
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Johanna RobinsonTower, 2020oil on cheesecloth over canvas30 x 30 in.
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Clark FIlioBather, 2021oil on canvas78 x 54 in.
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Nat MeadeCry Drops, 2021oil on hemp26 x 22 in.
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Maho DonowakiContainer, 2020single channel video2:24 minsedition of 4 with 2 artist proofs
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Eliot GreenwaldNight Car (egg), 2020oil stick on canvas58 x 46 x 2 in.
The object
that looks nothing like me
is the object that will probably kill me.
The blood cell
seeking the virus that looks nothing like the rest
will surround and terminate the danger.
The invention — is in the danger.
creativity redefines danger as creativity
culture redefines creativity as danger
who redefines danger redefines culture
The story of the boy and the clock, the lesson of the teacher and the boy,
the will of the boy and the world, the way of the world and the people,
the question of the people and the wall, the falling of the wall and the people,
the power of the people and the tweet, the alignment of the tweet and the twit,
the addiction of the twit and the screen, the worry of the parent and the screen,
the teaching of the planet and the dirt, the experiment of the flirt and the threat,
the melting of the climate and the neighbor, the color of the neighbor and the neighbor,
the construction of the ethos and the wave, the movement of the wave and the nation,
the home of the brave and the free, the scripture of the key and the lock,
the threat of the clock and the wires, the pyres of the higher and the lower,
the story of the globe and the boy, the freedom of the boy and the terror.
who redefines danger — redefines culture
—Edwin Torres, Talisman (from Xoeteox, Wave Books)
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Alicia AdamerovichLonging to be touched, 2019oil on canvas wrapped panel20 x 16 in.
World Building
In opposition to the failure of historical representative forms, the show also proposes new symbols and, with them, new worlds. Playing on visual affinities, the gritty terrains in Eliot Greenwald’s Night Car series are alive with the winking suggestions of grinning skylines or elementary stick-figures. And while not imbued with figurative traces like Greenwald’s, Alicia Adamerovich’s surreal landscapes fidget and stir with the restlessness of a sentient earth.
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Exene Karros’s graphic compositions and Johanna Robinson’s Tower collect visual resonances, tuning into the likenesses that link forms across religion, technology, and the natural world. Turning to world-building through the familiar materials of our present, Louis Osmosis’s sculptures are spectacular proposals which invite the viewer to imagine the context that gave rise to such objects.
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Alicia Adamerovichan unreliable landscape, 2021oil on canvas wrapped panel
35.5 x 64 in. -
Johanna RobinsonMuscle Memory, 2020oil on cheesecloth over canvas24 x 18 in.
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Louis OsmosisShell, 2020tortoise shell, RC antennas, epoxyDimensions variable (actual shell is approximately 10 x 6 in.)
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Exene KarrosDon’t Care, just a game to me, 2020oil on canvas16 x 20 in.
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Eliot GreenwaldNight Car (warm), 2020oil stick on canvas36 x 24 x 2 in.
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Alicia Adamerovichpeek-a-boo, 2020chalk pastel11 x 8 in. drawing on 9 x 12 in. paper
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Astrid TerrazasRetrato familiar, 2020acrylic on canvas43 x 33 in.
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Johanna RobinsonFeast or Famine, 2021oil on cheesecloth over canvas74 x 66 in.
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Astrid TerrazasTHEY WROTE IT FOR ME! THEY SANG IT FOR ME!, 2020oil on canvas13 x 10 in.
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Louis OsmosisDefault_01 (To Firmly Grasp It)., 2021chromed mannequin, airbrushed t-shirt, bleached sweatpants, polystyrene, gauze bandage, LED light
Dimensions variable -
Exene KarrosPills N Potions , 2019acrylic on canvas16 x 12 in.
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Louis OsmosisEngine, 2020reinforced paper-mache, polyurethane foam, aluminum tubing, toilet paper tube, popsicle sticks, blind spot mirror, paper pulp packaging, coffee can, acrylic paint, epoxy, cement73 x 24 x 15 in.
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Georgica Pettus, Sekoi Fali, 2021 dance, 10:13 mins
Running alongside the exhibition is a video program that further addresses the incredibly broadened field of mythologies and alternate realities that enrich our visual representational universe. Georgica Pettus’s Sekoi Fali plays with and humanizes the monumental figures of Christianity, while Alicia Smith embodies the Nagual of Mesoamerican folk religion who can turn from human into jaguar.
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Honoring her mother who recently passed, Caroline Garcia’s Choose Your Fighter seeks abstractions of solace and female wisdom through cooking shows and found footage. Finally, the episodes of Sistership TV bring together the formats of music video, sitcom, and seance in a headlong fantasy narrative.
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Caroline Garcia Choose Your Fighter, 2020 VR digital video, colour, sound. 3:24 mins
Sistership TV: Episodes 1-4, 2019-2020
The Powers (Katherine Kline, Jessica Mensch, Emily Pelstring) with contributions from Hiba Ali; Bianca S. Arroyo-Kreimes; Black Quantum Futurism; Ashley Bowa and Lesley Marshall; Violet Cutler; Fastwürms; Be Heintzman Hope and Sasha J. Langford; Ricky Katowicz, Bevin Kelley; Annapurna Kumar; Jenn E. Norton; Natasha Pickowicz; Kathy Rose; Greta Scheing; Jaimie Warren -
The Symbolists: Les Fleurs du mal
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