Lutz Bacher, Frank Benson, Mary Manning, Puppies Puppies (Jade Guarano Kuriki-Olivo), Frances Stark - -

Curated by K.O. Nnamdie - -

The Ecology of Visibility is an exhibition inspired by the ecstatic act of refusing predetermined identity, space and time. Lutz, Frank, Mary, Jade, and Frances experiment with what is prescribed as the provisional self, then venture far beyond internal standards and external feedback.

The exhibition implicitly questions the values associated with modes of representation. Through different media, each artist examines personal conformity as a social fiction that is imposed and that one only need abandon with a certain amount of willpower. Each artist challenges society’s insistence on the empirical and negotiates the complicated classifications which the western world has bequeathed. Refusing such associations denies and then reclaims both individual and collective meaning as it relates to equality.

Frank Benson’s Castaway, is a sculptural depiction of a modern lone figure at human scale, displaced and isolated in the present. As an enduring attempt to understand, Benson’s figure crouches down to meet you where you are; “bending and blurring space in ways that challenge the binary distinctions between the virtual and the real”. Lutz Bacher’s NDP #5 offers up a powerfully stark reimagining of the artist and art dealer relationship and hierarchy. For the entirety of the one hour film, the camera focuses on her former gallerist’s legs and crotch while he uncomfortably answers Lutz questions. The questions, like the artist herself, remain elusive and escape single summary. Mary Manning’s casual photography collages a meditation on their life. With the ability to make the familiar world look anew, the work is radically optimistic and fearless in its humanism. Frances Stark’s works from TheRealStarKiller series transforms inkjet prints of the mundane into stream-of-consciousness poetry; improvised through a constellation of language, figuration and very little personal boundary. Jade Kuriki Olivio’s work makes visible what may be hidden in plain sight, by representing a demographic not always visible, using language as both content and raw material.

In the rejection of the continuum, determining representations become irrelevant to the human ability to contribute to, or participate in society. Deliberation and disassociation from these characterizing distinctions serves as a promenade to the possible - to visibility.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Lutz Bacher​ lived and worked in New York (d. 2019). Recent solo exhibitions include University Art Gallery, University of California, Irvine (2019); K21 Ständehaus, Düsseldorf (2018); Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris (2018); KADIST, San Francisco (2017); Yale Union, Portland (2016); Greene Naftali Garage, Brooklyn (2016); Secession, Vienna (2016); Greene Naftali, New York (2015); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2014); Greene Naftali, New York (2014). H​ er work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Frank Benson ​(b. 1976, Virginia, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Working in sculpture and photography, Benson's practice centers on concepts of arrested movement and the use of digital tools in the creation of sculpture. Increasingly, Benson has employed technology in the production of works – for example, the translation of photographs of human models into meticulously-crafted ‘wireframe’ virtual models and 3-D prints. These models serve as the basis for hyper-real and minutely-finished statues, all of which drawing on Benson's own circle of artist and creatives. In 2019, Benson's work was the subject of a survey at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo. His work has been included in major group exhibitions, including L​ ike Life: Sculpture, Color,andtheBody,​TheMetBreuer,NewYork,2018,A​ rtintheAgesoftheInternet:1989totoday​,Instituteof ContemporaryArt,Boston,2018,2​ 015Triennial:SurroundAudience​,NewMuseum,NewYork,amongothers.

Mary Manning ​(b. 1972, Alton, IL) lives and works in New York City. She began taking photos of her everyday encounters while living in San Francisco in the 90’s. Her subjects include dance performances, the plastic partition between street and inside a bodega, trees, lovers, plastic bags. She weaves together the invisible relationships that happen between the visible subjects. Her book Blueprint, JMS Press, was published in 2018 to coincide with a solo exhibition at Little Sister, Toronto. Other recent solo shows include those at CANADA, Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn; and Jackie Klempay, Brooklyn. She has been in group shows at Situations, NY; Andrew Edlin Gallery, NY; The First and Only East Hampton Biennial, NY. Peradam Press published her first book, First Impressions of Greece, in 2014.

Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo)​, (b. 1989, Texas) lives and works in Los Angeles. She recently had solo exhibitions at Remai Modern, Saskatoon 2019; Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg 2019; Balice Hertling, Paris 2019; Queer Thoughts, New York 2019; Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin 2018; XYZ Collective, Tokyo 2018; Overduin & Co., Los Angeles 2017; Oracle, Berlin 2017; T293, Rome 2017; BFA Boatos, Sao Paulo 2016. Her work was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and the 9th Berlin Biennale.

Frances Stark​ (Newport Beach, California, 1967, lives and works in Los Angeles) has had recent survey exhibitions including “Uh-Oh: Frances Stark 1991-2015” at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015-2016) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2016-2017, and “Intimism” at the Art Institute of Chicago (2015). Her works have been presented in major international exhibitions, including “Censorship Now!” in the Whitney Biennial, New York (2017), “Bobby Jesus’s Alma Matter...” at the Carnegie International, Pittsburg (2013), “Put a Song in your Thing” at Performa, New York (2011), and her digital video “My Best Thing”, first shown at the 54th Venice Biennial (2011). Additional solo exhibitions by Frances Stark include the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2013); MoMA P.S. 1, New York (2011); the M.I.T. List Center, Cambridge (2010); Portikus, Frankfurt (2008); FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (2007), and the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2007), among others. She was a 2018 nominee for the Hugo Boss Prize, and the 2015 recipient of the Absolut Art Award. Her work is included in the collections of the MoMA, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, SFMoMA, San Francisco, Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, and others.

ABOUT THE CURATOR:

K.O. Nnamdie is an unaffiliated curator and art advisor from Nigeria. Nnamdie runs Restaurant Projects, a curatorial project and research-driven art advisory service based in New York City. Restaurant Projects, founded in 2018, is based on Nnamdie’s interest in the intersection between hospitality and the arts.

Nnamdie recently curated a fundraiser for nonprofit Towards Utopia, and with artists such as Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Malike Sadibe and Luke Gilford the campaign raised and provided over $100,000 in support for Black Trans Wxmen and Sex Workers who have been left out of COVID-19 relief. Nnamdie helped organize the Russian Pavilion with curator Elise by Olsen for the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2020. Nnamdie is simultaneously overseeing two curated exhibitions in New York; and is working on Doctor, an autobiographical book, spanning the ten years of his inoperative practice as an artist.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:  

Lutz Bacher , Frank Benson , Mary Manning , Puppies Puppies (Jade Guarano Kuriki-Olivo) , Frances Stark .