Darren Bader, Dan Colen, Rose Salane, Agathe Snow, and Andre Walker - - Curated by K.O. Nnamdie - -

What gets you out of bed in the morning? What motivates you to go to a job you may not love, to be healthy, save up to buy a house, or a luxury car? I like things I don't understand. That's why I didn't mind the turbulence yesterday, or the rain today — the uncertainty doesn't bother me.

Most Americans desire to attain the so-called “good life.” The perception of the “good life” as an economic pinnacle started losing its traction in the 1970s. The title Vegyn originates from my personal interest in a musical producer of the same name, who I perceive as living a synthesized version of this idealistic, aspirational lifestyle.

The title of the exhibition, while misleading as an anchor or in association with physical health, is rooted in a learned mindset and way of life. The show plunges into themes revolving around the term "anti-structure", which was coined by anthropologist Victor Turner in 1969. Anti-structure is the study of a state of mental and spiritual limbo that is experienced during the second stage of any rite of passage — the liminal stage. It’s when the novitiate is neither here nor there but rather between, remaining enveloped in an enduring upheaval, disarray, and a preternatural void. Anti-structure thus describes a stage of perpetual transformation characterized by moments of dissolution where “structural hierarchies are flattened or inverted.” Whereas the dominant ideology du jour was that any such breakdown would result in anomie and angst, Turner recognized that in times of great happenstance, culture reboots itself and new symbols, models, and paradigms arise.

Nnamdie has repeatedly turned the archetype of exhibition-making on its head — and thus the assembly of precisely staged relations into an art form. With the exhibition Vegyn, he conceives a scenography which brings together and reframes pivotal works by monumental contemporary figures, emphasizing aspects of legibility, tactility, fragility, and aggression across various media.

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Darren Bader (b. 1978, Bridgeport, CT) studied filmmaking and art history at NYU (BFA, 2000). He lives and works in New York and in transit. Bader’s conceptual hobbyhorses include: word works, pairings, impossible sculpture, misattribution, object fetishism, and trash sculptures. His exhibitions are often collaborative in nature, exploring and questioning the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate objects through complex (re)arrangements, surprise juxtapositions, and absurd associations. Institutional solo exhibitions include fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2020); (@mined_oud), Madre, Naples, Italy (2017-2018); Meaning and Difference, The Power Station, Dallas, TX (2017); chess: relatives, High Line Art, New York, NY (2017); light (and) regret, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2015); Where Is a Bicycle’s Vagina (and Other Inquiries), or Around the Samovar, 1857, Oslo, Norway (2012); and Images, MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012). Awarded the Calder Prize in 2013, Bader has taken part in numerous group exhibitions and biennials including 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2019); Stories of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2018); .com/.cn, K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space, Hong Kong, China (2017); One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, Kunsthalle

Dan Colen (b. 1979 in Leonia, New Jersey) Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation, Dan Colen’s oeuvre explores the tensions between figuration and abstraction, the abject and the sublime, the timely and the timeless. Colen’s earliest paintings investigate the forms and characters that populate our collective imagination. Today, he continues to probe cultural mythologies and archetypes in various media, appropriating imagery from animated films, mail-order catalogues, modernist abstraction, and street graffiti to create an artistic lexicon that insistently collapses the boundaries between high and low.

He received his BFA in 2001 from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. His work is held in various public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, Miami. Recent solo exhibitions include Dan Colen – Works from the Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo (2018); Sweet Liberty at Newport Street Gallery, London (2017) Help! at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2014); The L...o...n...g Count at the Walter De Maria Building, New York (2014); Psychic Slayer at the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2015); Shake the Elbow at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2015); and Oil Painting at the Dallas Contemporary (2016).

Rose Salane (b. 1992, New York, USA) is an artist based in New York who works with text, found objects and personal archives to reexamine significant social and cultural moments. Salane works in collaborations across disciplines such as urban planning and sociology to understand the systems, structures and labor of society amid the built environment. In doing so, her work addresses the truths rooted within testimonies of those who were witnesses to the conditions and time period being examined, often revealing narratives that are otherwise inaccessible through a macro historical lens. Salane has previously exhibited at The New Museum, New York, NY (2021); Hessel Museum of Art at Bard CCS, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2021); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2019); Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2019); LC Queisser, Tbilisi, Georgia (2019) and Carlos/Ishikawa, London (2018). Salane holds a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and a Master of Urban Planning from the Bernard & Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York.

Agathe Snow (b. 1976, Corsica, France) lives and works in Long Island, NY. She has shown nationally at the Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT; New Museum, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. Snow has also achieved international recognition, exhibiting at several prestigious institutions, such as Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany; Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; and Saatchi Gallery, London, UK. Snow’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Charles Saatchi Collection, London, UK; the Zabludowicz Collection; and in the Dikeou Collection, Denver, CO.

Andre Walker (b.1967 London England UK) immigrated to USA in the early seventies with his hairdresser Mom and sister Sandra.

Andre Walker is a London-born, New York-raised Designer, Creative Director, Cultural Commentator, Stylist and Artist with a long career in creating luxury womenswear and menswear fashion, shoes, jewellery, accessories and skins alongside his painting and mixed media practise. Revered for his purist vision, Andre is also known for creating dreams with his mesmerising and hypnotic dreamlike sketches and watercolours which juxtapose with his modernist approach: intense yet playful, bold yet ethereal.

Andre has been a winner of the prestigious ANDAM prize awarded by the French Ministry of Culture and has earned an Honorary Doctorate from Academy of Arts University, San Francisco, culminating in the cultural myth that has been developing around him throughout his diverse and career within the New York, Paris, and London design community.

Eschewing the usual seasonal rules and constraints of the International fashion calendar with its relentless collections and presentations, Andre has remained selective and true to himself by following an authentic and playful path, often taking breaks to explore other creative avenues. This unique approach to his work ensures it retains the innocence, purity and naivete which is so beguiling and has led to the patronage of many of the fashion industry’s heavyweights such as Rei Kuwakubo, Kim Jones and Virgil Abloh. Key design collaborations include Comme des Garcons, Dover Street Market, Yves Salomon, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs.

Key exhibitions include 'The Casual Pleasure Of Disappointment' at Thaddaeus Ropac, a collaborative effort with Bjarne Melgaard and Rob Recine, and ‘Non Existant Patterns’ at le musee du Louvre in Paris sponsored by Pendleton Woolen Mills. Earlier artistic participations to note: Mattress Factory 96/97 Andre Walker, Greer Lankton, and Yayoi Kusama make separate installations for the institution, curated by Margery King from the Andy Warhol Museum. Andre has a fervour for the improvised, the historical, the ‘unseen’, for products and designs with heritage and provenance and has long been an advocate of sustainability in many aspects of his work and personal life.

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ABOUT THE CURATOR:

K.O. Nnamdie (b.1991, Eket, Nigeria) is a curator, art advisor and artist based in Manhattan, NY. Nnamdie works as Projects Director at anonymous gallery, in addition to running 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.

In his role at the gallery, Nnamdie provides exploratory, curatorial and promotional contributions that support the gallery's existing programming, while specifically defining various public initiatives in New York City. Nnamdie curated the gallery’s celebrated exhibition The Ecology of Visibility featuring Lutz Bacher, Mary Manning, Frank Benson, Frances Stark, and Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo). In 2020 Nnamdie curated a fundraiser for nonprofit Towards Utopia, and with artists such as Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Malike Sadibe and Luke Gilford, raised over $100,000 in support for Black Trans Wxmen and Sex Workers who had 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.

ABOUT THE GALLERY:

anonymous is a platform for contemporary art, public art, and community involvement. Since 2008, the gallery has been committed to presenting ambitious projects featuring international emerging, mid-career, and historically significant artists. anonymous gallery operates in both New York City and Mexico City.

For further information, contact: hello@anonymousgallery.com