Interviews by Brainard Carey

Karla Knight in her studio Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to announce Universal Remote, a solo exhibition of new work for artist Karla Knight, running from November 3 – December 22, 2023. A solo display of Knight’s work will be held concurrently at The Art Show (ADAA) at the Park Avenue Armory from November 1–5. Over the past four decades, Knight has executed her idiosyncratic visons of UFO related imagery with the stubborn persistence of an artist unbeholden to the dictates of art world trends, although contemporary interest in spiritualist art has certainly offered a favorable context. Knight’s relationship with what might be broadly termed “the occult” is rooted in her upbringing; her father authored publications on, among other subjects, UFOs and ghosts, and her grandfather, also a writer, penned a book about afterlife communication. Her solo exhibition at the Aldrich Museum in 2021-22 expanded Knight’s recognition markedly and came at the same time she was beginning to experiment with weathered feedbags from the 1940s and ’50s, attracted to their creamy color and the traces they bore of past lives. She calls these works “tapestries,” as she embroiders the fabric and embellishes it with a combination of acrylic paint pens, vinyl paint, colored pencil, and graphite. Her new Universal Remote series of drawings and tapestries riffs on the notion of channels with central motifs inspired by anachronistic television sets that hail from the early decades of the Cold War; a time when the frequency of UFO sightings was a source of great national anxiety. The tapestry Universal Remote 1, 2022, is painted with a boxy television-like form—or “receiver,” a word the artist relishes—bearing her cryptic characters along with circles that suggest various dials and buttons: channel selectors, speakers, fine tuners, picture expanders. A large, rounded shape marked with blue crosshatching and abstract designs, some of which resemble yellow eyes with slivered pupils, overtakes the “screen.” At the mandala’s heart is Knight’s returning volumetric orb, here coronated with concentric circles. This celestial sphere’s significance denoted by its centrality to the composition, becomes a kind of universal picture, open to an endlessly expanding universe of possible readings. Karla Knight’s work is currently featured in the group exhibition, Sightings, at the Sun Valley Museum of Art (ID), and is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), among others. A second edition of her Aldrich Museum exhibition catalogue, Navigator, with added images of recent works and a new essay by Cassie Packard will be available on November 1, 2023. Karla Knight (b. 1958) Big Night Vision, 2023 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 46 x 73 inches Karla Knight (b. 1958) Delphi 3, 2023 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 33.5 x 30 inches Karla Knight (b. 1958) Universal Remote 1, 2022 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 68 x 49 inches.

Alva Mooses photographed by Mauricio Cortes Ortega at Shandaken Projects, Governor's Island 2023. Alva Mooses is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work explores the intersections of printed media, ceramics, and sculpture while engaging with earth-based materials to signal the memory of geological time. Her ceramic series titled ear to the earth/ culebra, truena, tormenta was exhibited at Jane Hartsook Gallery as part of her artist residency at Greenwich House Pottery. The slip-cast reconfigured globes move away from historical representations of the earth as a perfect sphere on a steady axis toward a transformative body—the pieces are glazed, distorted, mended, and kiln-fired multiple times. culebra, truena, tormenta translates to snake, thunder, storm, referring to the Mexica earth and mother goddess Coatlicue whose entire skirt, head, and belt represent snakes. The legendery 16th century Coatlicue statue was buried and unearthed multiple times since the Spanish conquest out of concern that the statue would inspire religious and political resistance; it now lives in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The writer Mirene Arsanios describes Alva’s ceramic globe series as: “Broken or no longer erect, the globe stands and their measuring systems are inoperative—the deconstructed globes undermine the project of western geography and the violence of its measuring tools, favoring instead a world, earth, and planet governed by the erotics of its own materials.” Alva holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited her work in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. She has completed fellowships and residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop, Shandaken Projects, Socrates Sculpture Park, Center for Book Arts, Greenwich House Pottery, The University of Chicago, Tou Trykk in Stavanger, Norway, and Casa Wabi, in Oaxaca, Mexico, among others. She serves on the faculty at Hunter College in the Department of Art and Art History and lives with her daughter and partner in Brooklyn. ear to the earth/ culebra, truena, tormenta, 2022 | ceramic | 20x15x8 inches | Photo by Alan Wiener courtesy of Greenwich House Pottery. ear to the earth/ culebra, truena, tormenta, 2022 | ceramic | 16x10x9 inches | Photo by Alan Wiener courtesy of Greenwich House Pottery. Undercurrents, 2023 | Drawing with CNC machine | 13x17 inches

Matthew Kirk’s (Navajo Nation) practice combines the materiality of his long-held job as an art-handler with mark-making inspired by comics, abstraction, and Diné (Navajo) visuality. A 2019 Eiteljorg Fellow, his work was recently featured in The New York Times. His recent solo exhibition White Snake (2023) was presented at Halsey McKay Gallery in New York City. Kirk was born in Arizona, raised in Wisconsin, and is based in Queens, New York. Waste Is A Thief, 2023 Wood, acrylic, ink. graphite, leather, coroplast, insulation foam, hardware, wire, canvas 63 x 60.5 x 6 inches (160 x 153.7 x 15.2 cm) Save That Chitter Chatter, 2023 Wood, acrylic, ink, graphite, Nerf, hardware, cotton strap 35.25 x 46.75 inches (89.5 x 118.7 cm) I'll Sing Along, 2023 Canvas, acylic, graphite, hardware, basketball rim, rope, hardware, wood 58.5 x 35 x 7 inches (148.6 x 88.9 x 17.8 cm)

Cyle Warner is a Brooklyn-based artist of Afro-Caribbean descent. A recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts with a BFA in Photography, he works across mediums, often using fabric and photographs inherited from family to explore his concept of Dis. In 2022 he attended the prestigious Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art. Welancora Gallery is proud to present Weh Dem? De Sparrow Catcher?, a solo exhibition of new work by Cyle Warner (b. 2001), on view from July 27 to October 10, 2023. Warner’s first exhibition at the gallery brings together a reimagined archive of photographs and textiles to reveal a very personal exploration of his family’s life in the Caribbean. Sourced from the Warner family archive, the photographs are layered, recomposed and enlarged to conjure feelings of curiosity about Warner’s elders and their life in the Caribbean. The works on view raise a number of questions; namely, what would life be like if there had been no migration to the United States? The photos, ranging from the mid 1940s to the early to mid 1970s, depict family members when they were permanently residing in the Caribbean. The hazy quality and sepia tones, as well as what’s visible, what’s further highlighted, and what’s left to be desired all lend themselves to the artist’s fractured understanding of a time in the Caribbean that he never experienced first hand. Cyle Warner a vessel a jam slow, 2023 Various fabrics and inkjet on fabric on wooden frame. 76 x 64 inches 193 x 162.6 cms. Photo: Copyright The Artist Courtesy of Welancora Gallery. Cyle Warner Album Page II (Debating with Powell and the Queen), 2023 Various Fabrics and Inkjet on Fabric on Stained Wooden Frame 15 1/2 x 11 inches 39.4 x 27.9 cms. Photo: Copyright The Artist Courtesy of Welancora Gallery. Cyle Warner I don't want to go, 2023 Archival pigment print with collage on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 5 x 7 inches 12.7 x 17.8 cms Edition of 2.

Heather Dewey-Hargborg, American artist and bio-hacker most knowned for the project Stranger Visions. Ana Brígida for The New York Times Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who is interested in art as research and critical practice. Her controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions in which she created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material (such as hair, cigarette butts, or chewed up gum) collected in public places. Heather has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, and the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, the Van Abbemuseum, Transmediale and PS1 MOMA. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wellcome Collection, and the New York Historical Society, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired. Heather has a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a visiting assistant professor of Interactive Media at NYU Abu Dhabi, an artist fellow at AI Now, an Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium, and is an affiliate of Data & Society. Hybrid (Trailer) from Heather Dewey-Hagborg on Vimeo. Installation view, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera. Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery. Still from Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera. Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery.

Jonathan Herbert (b. 1952, New York City) explores the nonverbal relationship between cosmology and consciousness. He creates unique, intuitive formulations of water-based paint using acrylic and urethane media made on the spot, mid-process. He explores the nonverbal nature of creative inspiration via intuition. These works examine the richness of the present moment while simultaneously referring to a concurrent interest in the expression of the past, of his traumatic experiences and resulting emotions. Much of his work has been informed by his extremely abusive childhood and the unsurprisingly drug- and alcohol-ridden years of his life prior to 1986. His experiences as a night shift cab driver in bankrupt New York inspired the years-long body of work, Views from a Yellow Cab. He drove a quarter-million miles over the course of five years. An important and interesting and uncommon view of humankind, as evidenced in the movie Taxi Driver. Herbert received his diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1977. He continued his studies, via an Independent Study Award from the Museum School, for more than a year in Antwerp, Belgium. He began exhibiting in 1978 in Soho and the East Village and has garnered several solo exhibitions. Many of his group shows have been in New York City, including tagging subways and walls in the East Village of the 1970s. In New York in the mid-eighties, shortly after MacPaint had first been released, Herbert was one of the founders of the Digital Art Movement. During his digital years, Silicon Graphics decorated their entire Seybold booth with his work, flew him to San Francisco and asked him to demonstrate his process during the convention. His digital work has been featured internationally. Herbert for years labored lovingly over the creation of digital medical drawings for pharmaceutical books and journals, continuously expanding his education, which fed his fascination with medicine. His work as a digital artist even led to being interviewed on network TV. Herbert’s bibliography begins in December 1982, in the regular Cookie Mueller column “Art and About” in Warhol’s Details Magazine. There is also a Jonathan Herbert entry in the Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia. He has appeared in and been reviewed in many publications. Portraits of Herbert are in both Nightline by Peter Donahoe and Taxi: The Social History of the New York City Cab Driver. Herbert’s work is in the collection of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Brooklyn Art Library, Pfizer Incorporated, the law firm Kirkland and Ellis, and The Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. Herbert currently lives and works in Sarasota, Florida, where, every day, he struggles to live fully in the face of multiple invisible disabilities including lymphoma, PTSD, and cognitive impairment, most of which result from 9/11 survivorship. Across the Universe, Acrylic and urethane on canvas 40 x 60 x 1.5 in Wish, Alchemical acrylic and urethane on canvas 60 x 40 in Shan Shui, acrylic and urethane on canvas 72 x 60 x 1.5 in

Mickalene Thomas Photographed by Malike Sidibe At Yale Gallery for The New York Times Magazine. Mickalene Thomas was born and raised in New Jersey and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. One of the most influential artists in the world today, her innovative practice has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. She is known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of black and female identity within the Western canon. Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Award nominated co-producer, curator, educator and mentor to many emerging artists. Apart from her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums and collaborates with corporations and luxury brands. In addition to an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the New York Academy of Art (2018) and a United States Artists Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015), she has been awarded multiple other prizes and grants, including the Pratt Institute Legends Award (2022); Rema Hort Mann Foundation 25th Anniversary Honoree (2022); Artistic Impact Award, and more. Thomas is also the Co-Founder of SOULAS House, a cultural hub and retreat for Black women, the Co-Founder of Pratt>FORWARD and founder of Art>FORWARD Artist in the Market incubator for post-graduate students. Mickalene Thomas, September 1981, 2023. Dye sublimation print and rhinestones, 63.375 x 57.75 x 1.25 in Mickalene Thomas, December 1981, 2023. Dye sublimation print and rhinestones, 58.625 x 48.125 x 3 in Mickalene Thomas, Cover 1981, 2023. Dye sublimation print and rhinestones, 15.125 x 12.25 x 1.625 in

In 2021, Anna Berlin was awarded a Fulbright Research and Study Scholarship to Berlin, Germany, and has since painted between her new home and her family’s house in New Jersey. The paintings weave Berlin’s life with the stories she grew up with about her family, alongside new understanding gained from independent research on her German-Jewish history. The paintings are of a grayscale world, where documentation, legal papers, and everyday ephemera become part of her language of storytelling. The works in Sisters use the monotone language of the bureaucratic documents she relied on in the first year abroad, such as tax forms, proofs of identity, and lists. The visual-verbal governmental speech was sometimes fraught with confusion as she shares her last name with the city, creating reverberations in the artist’s imagination of past and present, person and place, self and family, family history and cultural history. In exploring her new home, the artist accessed a deeper connection to her family’s past in Germany and especially on the role of documents and documentation– how they affected their status, imperiling and saving their lives, as they fled their homes in the 1930s and 1940s to escape the Second World War. Alongside the personal and legal papers her grandparents brought with them to the US, some that were recently donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., there is also the oral; intergenerational memories that were passed along in car rides or at the kitchen table in New Jersey. Short, diaristic narratives accompany each painting on the Image List. Names of people and places blur together – Wasser, Berlin, New York, New Jersey – as the generations travel back and forth over water and over land. Earlier this year, Anna Berlin and Olympia released an artist’s book called Notes from Berlin, that is part memoir, part travelog, and part family history. It was printed in an edition of 100 copies and is available at the gallery. Anna Berlin, Two Sisters, 2023, Flashe, acrylic, oil, epoxy dough on canvas, 52 x 40 x 2 in (132.1 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm) Anna Berlin Wasser, 2023 Flashe and acrylic on canvas with two stools made of flashe and acrylic on epoxy dough and foam stools 60.5 x 40 x 10 in (153.7 x 101.6 x 25.4 cm) Anna Berlin The Vollendam, 2023 Flashe, acrylic, epoxy dough on canvas 52 x 40 x 2 in (132.1 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm)

Marleen Sleeuwits (NL), Multidisciplinary artist Marleen Sleeuwits, born in 1980 in Enschede, currently lives and works in The Hague. In 2001 she graduated from the Royal Academy of the Arts with a BA in photography, whereafter she obtained her MA in the same discipline at AKV|St. Joost in 2005. Marleen Sleeuwits has been exhibiting solo and in group exhibitions, in The Netherlands and internationally. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions and art fairs such as: Royal Encounters, a group exhibition at Museum Escher in The Hague, Isomatrix, a solo exhibition at Kunsthal Rotterdam.This year she has two major exhibitions; one solo in the Centre Photographique in Rouen, France and a duo in Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York, U.S.A. Ongoing Series of False Ceilings, Year: 2023, Different sizes, Ultrachromeprint, plaster, false ceiling and wood in plexiglasscontainer. All pieces are unique. Interior no. 53, Year: 2019. Size: 150 x 118 cm. Ultrachromeprint on aluminium in frame with museum glass. Installation view, Radical Intervention. Burned photo-prints, neon paper and mirror. At Sous les Etoiles Gallery, New York, U.S.A., October 2023

Sarah Lubin (Boston, MA) earned a B.A. in Art History from McGill University in 2001, followed by a year in Foundation Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London). She received an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University and an M.F.A. in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Lubin is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant (2019 and 2021). Frames is the artist's fourth solo exhibition with Nancy Margolis Gallery. Sarah Lubin, Index, 2023, oil on canvas, 36 x 60 inches Sarah Lubin, Pink Room, 2023, oil on canvas, 54 x 42 inches Sarah Lubin, Picnic, 2023, oil on canvas, 42 x 54 inches

Julie Severino is a Brooklyn based painter. She received her MFA from New York Academy of Art. Severino creates psychological narratives that function as a tool to deepen her understanding of the mind and body connection, in relation to her own personal history and the larger human experience. Playing with perspective, her paintings depict disproportionate figures or things that are in dialogue with the multidimensional environments. Rendering parts of the work differently serves as a means to distinguish rhythm, stillness, force and sensitivity. Stillness and time are necessary to reveal parts of the enigmatic scenes. The sculptures are made with various materials, such as, aluminum, magic sculpt, glass, paper, hair and other materials. The transition from painting to sculpture allows Severino to explore with her hands and body in a way that calls attention to an immersive visual language and way of creating. Including poetry with some of the work is an important part of Severino’s studio practice. Often, the writing becomes the genesis of the paintings and sculptures, but sometimes, during the process of creating, the work will inspire the text that then becomes a part of the physical artwork. Listen to Severino read her poetry here. JULIE SEVERINO, Abundance and Light, 2023, oil, graphite, colored pencil on canvas, 60 x 70 in (152.4 x 177.8 cm) JULIE SEVERINO, Arising and Passing, 2023, oil, graphite, colored pencil on canvas, 48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm) Prayers Through Poetry, 2023, oil, gold leaf, graphite, colored pencil on canvas, 24 x 18 in (61 x 45.7 cm)

Edward Povey was born in London, England in 1951, the only child of a merchant seaman and a seamstress. He studied at the Eastbourne College for Art and Design in England and at the University of Wales in North Wales. 1972-1978 Between 1975 and 1981 he came to the attention of the British media as a muralist, completing 25 internal and external murals up to five stories in height, in Israel, Wales and England. Between 1983 and 1988 he painted and studied symbolism on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and learned under the Danish architectural abstractionist Paul Klose, and the art dealer Jan de Maere in Brussels. From 1991 he showed with John Whitney Payson in New York beside Paul Cadmus, Jack Levine and Michael Bergt and successively with galleries in The Hague, Paris, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New Orleans, West Palm Beach and London, up to the present. In 2008 he was proposed for a knighthood for his contribution to art in Britain by the Chancellor of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and others. In 2019 the British Library documented his career for the nation. In 2012 the Museum of Modern Art in Wales published a biography of Povey’s life and work up to that point. In 2018 Povey studied Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna in the National Gallery in London, using Ghiotto’s and Raphael’s Verdaccio palette for his new paintings which he termed Emotional Realism. Between 2019 and 2023 Povey appeared in many publications and interviews in Spain, Poland, the United States, Egypt, England, Italy, France and Brazil. His paintings hang in museum collections, private and corporate collections in thirty countries. Since 2021 he has shown with Waterhouse & Dodd in New York. His current Solo Exhibition: “HUMAN”, 5th October - 3rd November 2023. 15 East 76th Street, New York, NY 10021. T: 212 717 9100. Edward Povey is currently beginning a new collection of paintings in his studio in the Devon countryside of England. SEINE, 2023. Edward Povey, Oil on Belgian linen 170.0 X 170 cm / 67 X 67 in. More information from Waterhouse & Dodd, New York. “In civilised societies human beings devise traditions and ceremonies to safely contain meaningfulness in the desert night. Romance, religion, families, paintings and films are all ceremonies of meaning. Even boxes and vases contain what otherwise disperses beyond our control, like emotions in a thunderstorm. We are so very vulnerable, and to have seen the same chair since our childhood, the same parent, the same sky above us remaining and remaining. It is this that calms the chaos. When a couple dances to the trickling pulse of soft rock, bleeding out of a out of a midwestern late radio station, moving slowly beside the long porch window, another couple dance in the reflected glass – and that is my painting. They will always move in a dim tandem with us, twin sisters, identical brothers. Immortal tricks of the light. Paintings are altars, objects and artefacts far stronger than the buildings that host them, because they have centuries in their pockets. This painting groups all that is, for all intents and circumstances, unnecessary and transitory: the aging chair, the little vase of flowers, the ramekin of glacé cherries, the teaspoon of blood, the distracted middle-aged woman. Only a human being can appreciate that these objects are in fact precious and cherished, beautiful and indispensable.” DEFINITIE, 2023. Edward Povey, Oil on linen, 200 X 200 cm / 79 X 79 inches. Modelling courtesy of London model Emily Poynton. Photograph of Baroness Ersilia La Lomia, Sicily, courtesy of her niece, Marzia Caramazza. More information from Waterhouse & Dodd, New York. "Paintings explain themselves just as the silhouette of an arguing couple does, gesturing in a midsummer alleyway viewed from a passing train. Sunday, south London, the hot streets empty, a couple drawing lines in their lives. The English say 'Double Dutch', meaning 'inexplicable',

Floria González was born in Monterrey on July 20th, 1980. She moved to Acuña Coahuila in 1983, eventually moving to Mexico City at 16 where she currently lives and works. Floria’s dreamlike, cinematic scenes explore alternate realities and hidden layers of the psyche. Using photography, video, installation, performance, and painting, Floria maintains a constant dialogue between fantasy and imagination, excavating forms and scenes that reconstruct her own identity through memories and experiences. Floria has exhibited work in Mexico City, Monterrey, New York, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Berlin, Italy, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore. Floria González, Too Young to Die, M. Ward, First Aid Kit, 2023, oil on canvas, 44 3/10 x 44 3/10 in / 112.5 x 112.5 cm Floria González, The Smoke, The Smile, 2023, oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 35 2/5 in / 80 x 90 cm Floria González, Crazy, Patsy Cline, 2023, oil on canvas, 35 2/5 x 35 2/5 in / 90 x 90 cm

Enemy Combatant, David Winner's third novel (March 2021) received a Kirkus-starred review and was a Publisher's Weekly/Booklife Editor's Pick. He is the co-editor of Writing the Virus, a New York Times-noted Anthology. His Kirkus-recommended second novel, Tyler's Last, was nominated for a Pushcart while his first, The Cannibal of Guadalajara, won the 2009 Gival Press Novel Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Millions, The Kenyon Review and (in German) Manuskripte. He is a senior editor at StatOrec magazine, the fiction editor of The American, a magazine based in Rome, a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail, and a columnist for 3 Quarks Daily Master Lovers, a non-fiction work inspired by hidden love letters from the 1930’s, comes out in November.

Portrait, Laura Anderson Barbata. Photo: Jake Holler Born in 1958 in Mexico City, Laura Anderson Barbata is a transdisciplinary artist, performer, writer, and educator who lives and works between New York and Mexico City. Since 1992 Anderson Barbata has worked primarily in the social realm, initiating projects in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States. Among them is the ongoing The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana, begun in 2005, which resulted in the removal of the project’s titular figure’s body from the Schreiner Collection in Oslo, Norway and its successful repatriation and burial in Sinaloa, Mexico, Pastrana’s birth state. The project continues with Anderson Barbata’s production of related artworks, publications, zines, and performances. Anderson Barbata is also known for her project Transcommunality (2001-present), presented in collaboration with stilt dancers, artists, and artisans from Mexico, New York, and the Caribbean. Transcommunality has been staged at various museums, schools, and other public spaces both as exhibitions and performance “Interventions.” Among them are Columbia University, New York (2023); The Watermill Center, Water Mill (2021); Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans (2021); MUCA Roma, UNAM, Mexico (2020); BRIC Arts | Media House, Brooklyn (2019); The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C. (2019); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2017, 2018); Rutgers University, New Brunswick (2017); United Nations Plaza, New York (2017); University of Wisconsin, Madison (2015); Museo Textil de Oaxaca, Mexico (2012, 2016); The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2008); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007). Installation View, Laura Anderson Barbata: Singing Leaf. Photo: Olympia Shannon Archive X, 1998/2023, handmade abaca paper bundles with inclusions from the New Testament in Spanish, Ye´Kuana, Yanomami, Ashuar, Maya, and Quechua languages on bamboo structure, unique installation dimensions variable. Photo: Olympia Shannon. El miedo no anda en burro (autorretrato), 1998/2023, honey wax, mirror, sticks, and stones, unique, 15½ x 7 7/8 x 6 in. / 39.4 x 20 x 15.2 cm. Photo: Olympia Shannon

Mikael Levin explores our conceptions of place, identity and temporarily. His photographs are often of commonplace, everyday sites that, while seemingly insignificant in themselves, tie into larger historical events or movements of our times. By way of these places, his photographs form a topography of societal structures, predispositions, influences and memory. A note on the Stono Rebellion image from the artist: “Critical Places is essentially about how the rebellions of the enslaved are remembered (or not remembered) in the landscape. Through my witnessing of these places in my photographs, I am bringing forward how these rebellions still echo in social patterns and economic structures. What we see the case of the Stono Rebellion is the emergence of the trope of the Black man as "feared, violent, irrational.” Other rebellions are early examples of how power controls information, excessive Police violence, the lack of the Black voice in the telling of our history, the minimization of the woman’s roll, and so on and so forth.“ LEVIN, Mikael (b. 1954) Untitled (from Subaqueous). 2018 Gelatin silver print, printed by artist. 2018 Edition of 5 Paper and image size: 19 ½ x 19 ½ inches. LEVIN, Mikael (b. 1954) U.S. Highway 17 at Wallace River, South Carolina. 2020 / The Stono Rebellion. 1739 Gelatin silver print, printed by the artist. 2023 Edition of 5 Paper size: 16 x 20 inches Image size: 14 3/8 x 17 1/2 inches. LEVIN, Mikael (b. 1954) 4th of July. La Grange, Missouri. 2022 / The Lin Uprising. 1849 Gelatin silver print, printed by the artist. 2023 Edition of 5 Paper size: 16 x 20 inches Image size: 14 3/8 x 19 3/8 inches.

Skuja Braden portrait in porcelain 2020 Skuja Braden is a pseudonym & the surnames of International duo Ingūna Skuja (Latvia), & Melissa Braden (USA) working collectively & primarily with porcelain. Skuja Braden represents an “absence of presence” of an individual author, where two artists have combined forces creating a fictive and alternate proxy identity. Collaboration is the non-hierarchical framework Skuja Braden utilize as method, strategy, and philosophy, exploring alternative relations to power through a fusion of disparate identities, inclinations, and perceptions. The work is conceptually based, but always expressed as a synthesis of painting & sculpture. Their works blend decorative, literary, and political elements into hybrid forms utilizing material that is historically associated with absolute refinement. Afternoon Matinee, porcelain (65x39x21 cm) 2021 Flower Power, porcelain (64x33x30) 2022 Rock-a-bye, porcelain, stoneware, wood, and wax (56x64xx36cm) 2008

In 1932, Paulina Peavy (1901 – 1999) attended a séance at the home of Ida L. Ewing in Santa Ana, California, where she claims to have met a UFO named Lacamo, a spirit from another world. From that moment forward Peavy, a university-trained artist, painted with a brush that “moved on its own.” In order to better channel Lacamo’s energies, Peavy also constructed and wore masks when she painted, occasionally signing her works with Lacamo’s name alongside her own. Peavy’s entire life was dedicated to promoting her worldview and various philosophies through drawing, painting, sculpture, text, and film. Her works on paper depict the artist’s individualized visual cosmos using shapes that resemble energy beams, solar systems, and procreative organic shapes signifying genitalia, ova, fallopian tubes, sperm, and fetuses. Peavy’s life and work were constantly evolving to reflect her belief in mankind’s evolution to an androgynous one-sex through contact with aliens. Laura Whitcomb is a surrealist scholar and the director of Label Curatorial, which focuses on lesser-known artists and movements of the West Coast. She has worked at the Gala - Salvador Dalí Foundation at the Dalí Theatre Museum in Figueres, Spain, while also contributing essays for exhibitions at the Dalí Museum in Florida. She is also a focused scholar of artists who engage hermetic traditions in their art practice. "Paulina Peavy: Etherian Channeler" in 2023 (D.A.P.) is edited by the adjunct LACMA curator Dr. Ilene Susan Fort and focuses on the channeler artist Paulina Peavy, whom Whitcomb curated at Beyond Baroque in 2021 and for the Andrew Edlin gallery in 2023. Label Curatorial focuses on sound art and light artists. Studying the inceptive roots of what became Los Angeles's most notable home-grown movement, she presented a Light and Space installation of Peter Alexander, Laddie John Dill, and Larry Bell at the official re-opening of the Brand Library and Art Center in 2014. In 2022, she curated "Luminaries of Light and Space" at LAX Airport, produced by Dublab, which included these artists along with Robert Irwin, De Wain Valentine, Fred Eversley, Helen Pashgian, Hap Tivey, and Gisela Colon. Whitcomb has two books forthcoming through Label Curatorial, highlighting artist and poet-run galleries from 1949-1965 and artists of the Beat era who continued surrealist lineages while exploring the occult. Paulina Peavy (1901 - 1999) 82 Modern Art, n.d. Mixed media 7.75 x 10 x 0.5 inches Paulina Peavy (1901 - 1999) Phantasma 59, c. 1980s Acrylic on canvas board 24 x 30 inches Paulina Peavy (1901 - 1999), Untitled, c. 1937 - 1939, Oil on panel, 72 x 48 inches

Julien Gardair portrait by Catherine Talese Julien Gardair is a French artist based in New York City since 2007. His cutout paintings, installations, sculptures, and works on paper are known for their adherence to strict sustainable systems. Gardair's art frequently incorporates a blend of languages and stories, creating a diverse and multilayered visual experience. Julien Gardair’s recent paintings reveal his innovative approach to art. Drawing inspiration from the Supports/Surfaces movement in France and the Pattern/Decoration movement in the United States, Gardair’s art is a fusion of materiality and pattern, along with the structural constraints of Minimalism. These multi-faceted pieces are a synthesis of vibrant paintings and textile works and are created by employing techniques like folding, cutting, and stitching. His work challenges the viewer’s perception of materiality. His sustainable approach ensures that no parts of the paintings are discarded, nodding to the global potential of restoration and upcycling. He holds an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris Cergy and his work has been shown throughout Europe and the United States. Notably, he was included in La couleur toujours recommencée, the first exhibition of the re-vamped Musée Fabre in Montpellier along with Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Shirley Jaffe, Peter Soriano and others. He has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de Céret and Bric Arts, Brooklyn. He was commissioned by the New York MTA Arts & Design to create a permanent installation for the 18th Avenue and Kings Highway stations in Brooklyn. The Mobilier National also commissioned him to design a Savonnerie carpet on display at the Elysée Palace. The exhibition Julien Gardair / Melanie Vote: Concurrence, offers an intimate exploration of works by both artists, who beyond their individual artistic pursuits, share a bond as a married couple. The show, presented by Garvey|Simon takes place at DFN Projects, 16 East 79th Street until November 3rd, 2023, Monday to Friday from 11 am to 4 pm. Julien Gardair, Ascension, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Julien Gardair, Wide open, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Left: Julien Gardair, Zaouji, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on reclaimed pants and canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Center: Melanie Vote, Flamboyan, 2023, 16 x 12, oil on paper on wood. Right: Julien Gardair, Striped, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on reclaimed t-shirt and canvas, folded, cut, stitched and stretched over wooden stretchers.

Aiba Riji 相場るい児 Based in Seto City, the epicenter of Japanese ceramic making since 10th century, Ruiji Aiba (b. 1964 in Fukuoka) creates ceramic sculptures and “netsuke.” They are often figures of children, innocently unclothed and at play with frogs, goldfishes, octopuses. Inspired by traditional dolls, fairy tales, classic movies and manga, Aiba emphasizes the ominosity aspect of dolls. The artists describes they are “neither human nor objects. Dolls are transcendental existence.” Aiba’s recent exhibitions were presented at SEIZAN Gallery (New York and Tokyo), Tsuboya Gallery (Kyoto), Gallery Kenbishi (Aichi), Ginza Mitsukoshi (Tokyo). The artist’s first solo exhibition in the US “Dancing With An Octopus” is on view at SEIZAN Gallery New York through October 21st. Ruiji Aiba, Octopus And Child, 2023, Ceramic, 8.3 x 8.3 x 5.7 inches (21 x 21 x 14.5 cm) Photo by Kenichi Hashimoto / Courtesy of SEIZAN Gallery Ruiji Aiba Octopus And Child, 2023 Ceramic 8.3 x 8.3 x 5.7 inches (21 x 21 x 14.5 cm) Photo by Kenichi Hashimoto / Courtesy of SEIZAN Gallery Ruiji Aiba Two Innocent Boys: Death Comes Equally, 2023 Ceramic Set of 2: 11 x 3.9 x 3.5 inches (28 x 10 x 9 cm) 10.6 x 3.9 x 3.5 inches (27 x 10 x 9 cm) Photo by Kenichi Hashimoto / Courtesy of SEIZAN Gallery