Painting (Painting)

Untitled (Boom Box, Double-Sided) by Mary Ann Aitken is representational painting of a boom box on an unconventionally long canvas painted on both sides, to mimic the scale and appearance of the actual appliance. Known for going against trends, Aitken often favored dimensions, such as the square, that were otherwise considered out of style in contemporary painting. In this double-sided painting, one side depicts the titular boombox set up—a boxy cassette player, flanked by a pair of stereo speakers in front of wood panelling.

Painting (Painting)

Untitled (Diptych) by Mary Ann Aitken is a pair of paintings; one entirely abstract and the other a hybrid of representational and abstract elements. The left-side painting is a cacaphonous all over composition of brushstrokes layered in the artist’s signature primary colors. In the same color scheme, the right-side painting portrays a still life with an arrangement of flowers as its focal point, with marks and splatter spilling from the left-side composition into the right.

Painting (Painting)

The painting is composed of nineteenth century linen collected over five years. The pieces started out as offcuts from a large work called Fabaceae, which refers to the carob bean, an African staple found in the rainforest and tropical forests. The artist took these already dyed offcuts and dyed them further and then put them out in the sun to fade.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

This work was filmed on the shores of Jelly Bowl beach in Carpinteria, California, after Jennifer West was taken by the sight of a coastal family home owned by surfer Andy Perry. After conversing with Perry, spending time in the site, and engaging with several other locals, West wanted to produce a film that documented this idyllic Californian lifestyle and that embodied the sense of joy, warmth and nostalgia that multiple generations of surfers and their families had shared in this site. In the footage we see a couple of silhouettes wrapped up in blankets as they watch their beloved ones surfing at dawn—including surfers Andy Perry, and siblings Makela, Alana and Zach Moore.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Through a seemingly haphazard layering of glass and porcelain, Dérive is part of a larger installation series that address borders and displacement. Sheets of glass and porcelain, two transformational materials of alchemy, are stacked loosely in the shape of melting glaciers that places humans, animals, and nature in the same ecosystem. Migrations of one population into another and the subsequent displacement is emphasized in sharp, jagged edges of the transparent glass—phantasmagoric dreams of a distant place—the migration of not simply physical bodies but also that of political opinions and thoughts.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

This work exemplifies George Pfau’s interest in zombies and liminal embodiment. In different ways, zombies are present here as an icon of coming apart, yet they retain a persistent thereness.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Her collage works are made from the pages of glossy lifestyle magazines, from which the artist identifies colors, forms, and textures that she reconstitutes into rich, abstract compositions. Calling them her Fantasías, Wild’s collages rework the extravagances of consumer culture into beautiful, beguiling images of her own that seem to evoke unknown terrestrial landscapes, dreamlike architectures, and imaginary spaces. Elisabeth Wild’s colorful, bold, and lavish collages are the result of the artist’s daily practice.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

For Untitled, Caesar encased recycled objects such as scraps of plywood, paper or cloth in resin and then cut and reassembled the pieces into abstract forms. This technical rework allows for a clinical inspection of the material contents of the piece and the resulting slanted industrial monolith echoes minimalist sculpture, although with a different expressive texture. Indeed, Untitled can be seen as a contemporary pyramid with a painterly surface.

Photography (Photography)

The lengthy titles in Chen Xiaoyun’s work often appear as colophons to his photographs that invite the viewer to a process of self realization through contemplating the distance between word and image. Near his studio, Chen often walks over fallen branches in late autumn and sense their existence. Thus, his placing them in diverse contexts builds a “narrative Ariadne’s thread” where the branches become “the language of things” intertextually cohering his oeuvre.

Photography (Photography)

Xaviera Simmons often employs her own body and collected materials in the service of her photographs and performances. Not to be mistaken as mere portraiture, however, Simmons’ works are explorations of the Black body in relation to landscape and other dimensions of non-linear space and time. Concealing and flattening her subjects with costumes and collage-like, abstract pictorial devices, the artist arranges archival photographs, printed textiles, and anthropological artifacts in configurations that highlight the power of visual culture to shape contemporary understandings of the self.

Painting (Painting)

Made in cast bronze, Two Eyes Two Mouths provokes a strong sense of fleshiness as if manipulated by the hand of the artist pushing her fingers into wet clay or plaster to create gouges that represent eyes, mouths and the female reproductive organ. Equally, there is a semblance of fruits—their succulence and fragility. While the work is sensual, the matte bronze surface refuses any expectation of softness.