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FURORE
OCT 24 – NOV 28, 2020LaKela Brown
Mariah Dekkenga
Estefania Puerta
curated by Jackie Klempay
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“She flies over partitions on thewings of a bat; while you
play cards w/ a stranger.
She bites your foot.She leaves, screeching at the sight of yrsilver and turquoise. The stranger melts.Dank mirror, a gilded swamp in which you
sink. A singing parchment that bursts
continually to flame.
Kingdom of smoke in which swirl demon childrenwhining eternally for the golden breadpanis angelicus, they glimpsedon a snowy mountain.Whose mouth
sits on yr mouth
so that you freeze?
Who blew like cold wind
thru the broken window?
Who sits like sphinx on yr chest& do you dare
win at her game?– Diane di Prima, excerpt from “Lilith – An Interlude” -
GOLESTANI presents Furore, an exhibition of three artists with distinct practices, LaKela Brown, Mariah Dekkenga, and Estefania Puerta, curated by Jackie Klempay of SITUATIONS in New York City. The show began with a daytime reception on October 24th and should continue through November 28th, but is currently on display online only.
This exhibition is less about tying together works using a formalist model than the beginning of a dialogue examining the direct and indirect connections among these artists and their works. The ideas driving their formal choices are specific, allowing the artists to set their own conceptual parameters. They are not connected in terms of an optical or formal likeness, but rather they use formal means to arrive at singular destinations. Similar to how Diane Di Prima’s poetry mixes stream-of-consciousness with attention to form, and then joins politics to spiritual practice – the formality is only a means to an end.
The idea here is to unite three artists without decontextualizing their individual practices based solely on aesthetics. By promoting three unique methodologies, the viewer is privy to an intersection of three divergent ways to approach contemporary topics, such as how technology and politics affect the body, physical space and human rights. The significance behind the works are enmeshed within the life it sprang from. However, like it’s form, identity is not a passe-partout.
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LaKela Brown
Composition with Doorknocker Earrings I, 2020 Plaster, foam and acrylic
51 x 42 cm -
LaKela Brown
Composition with Doorknocker Earrings II, 2020 Plaster, foam and acrylic
51 x 42 cm -
»The jewelry and body parts that make up LaKela Brown’s exhibition resemble, on first glance, the kind of historical artifacts that one might find in a prestigious museum.« –Artforum
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LaKela Brown presents two plaster bas-reliefs which echo the aesthetics of ancient Egyptian Greco-Roman friezes. Formal repetition of shapes cast in bright white plaster initially appear as an abstract visual language, however her process involves casting jewelry of the 1990’s hip hop era, such as bamboo earrings, gold-capped teeth, and rope necklace chains, alongside other relics frequently attributed to African-American culture. Gold acrylic paint on some of the earrings point to value structures and a symbol of social standing. These shapes are not arbitrarily chosen or collected, they hold a deep significance for the artist and culture she grew up in.
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Mariah Dekkenga
Untitled, 2015 Oil on linen
22 x 22 in / 56 x 56 cm -
Mariah Dekkenga
Untitled, 2015 Oil on linen
22 x 22 in / 56 x 56 in -
Mariah Dekkenga
Untitled, 2015 Oil on linen
22 x 22 in / 56 x 56 cm -
»This philosophy feels out of step with our current culture. Why play a game just for the sake of playing?« –ARTnews
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Mariah Dekkenga displays several paintings in oil on linen. Known for colorful geometric abstraction, her methodology builds upon color theory to present a vast range of hues in complex compositions. She has developed a personalized system of arriving at her configurations via computer software. Selected digital compositions are transferred by hand, fusing computerized color scales and painterly gestures. Rectilinear shapes divide the canvas the way multiple windows and tabs lie open on a computer screen. Paint on the surface appears as if it were printed over an abstract expressionist painting, creating continually shifting perception.
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Estefania Puerta
The Calloused Wing Sings '#1, 2020 Mixed media on paper
14 x 20 in / 36 x 51 cm -
Estefania Puerta
The Calloused Wing Sings #3, 2020 Mixed media on paper
14 x 20 in / 36 x 51 cm -
Estefania Puerta
The Calloused Wing Sings #2, 2020 Mixed media on paper
14 x 20 in / 36 x 51 cm -
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»Experiental installations featuring sculpture, video, scent, writing, and performance are steeped in layers of psychoanalytic theory, mythology, and profound insights into language, memory, ritual, and time.« –AUTRE
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Estefania Puerta’s compositions of dense and varied materials (both organic and inorganic) reflect her research and personal history of immigration and un-documentation in the United States. On view is a porcelain shoe-shaped sculpture that is a candle holder on one end, and a vase on the other, then placed in a design made of coffee grounds. Central to Puerta’s work is the human form and an effort to reclaim marginalized bodies from traditional representations. Puerta explains, “The whole question around holding and containment, and the way that those words can be so different from each other. What does it mean to be held, what does it mean to be contained—detained? The question around being trapped and being held can be so slippery sometimes. What does it look like to visualize both, together?” Also in the exhibition, several mixed media drawings depicting surreal
interpretations of female anatomy embrace the grotesque. Puerta accentuates toes, breasts, hair, and tears in rendering the human body vulnerable, yet self-healing.
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Estefania Puerta
Look at her Laughing, Like a Hifer to the Slaughter, 2017 Charcoal on paper
56 x 42 in / 142 x 107 cm -
Estefania Puerta
Take Your Time She´s Only Burning, 2017 Charcoal on paper
56 x 42 in / 142 x 107 cm -
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»In Latin American culture, there´s a lot of commeoration and prayer, keeping flames going. I´ve used wax a lot in my work, and I´m getting more interested in candles. There is this material culture element—it´s not just wax to stand in for skin, there is this specific object, that it´s made into that has this function of spirituality, hope or mourning. I guess it´s not that I´m specifically interested in magic or the ritual, I´m interested in the materials that hold a lot of that kind of weight.« —Estefania Puerta
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For the artists in this exhibition, why they conceive, what they create, how they live, and where they come from, are intimately aligned.
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At the heart of all of these works is the desire to find balance and orientation through individual explorations in form, color (or lack thereof), and materiality, amidst a technologically, spiritually, and politically induced furor.
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LaKela Brown
LAKELA BROWN (b. 1982 in Detroit, MI) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Brown received her B.F.A. from the College for Creative Studies in 2005. Brown has held solo exhibitions at Reyes | Finn, Detroit; Lars Friedrich, Berlin; Jackie Klempay, Brooklyn; Cave, Detroit; and 56 Henry, New York. She was included in a group show at We Buy Gold in Brooklyn in 2017. Brown’s work has been featured in Classic Beauty: 21st-Century Artists on Ancient [Greek] Form at Providence College, and Readymades Belong to Everyone: Curated by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen at the Swiss Institute. Brown is currently on faculty at NYU and was a 2018 resident at Ox-Bow School of Art. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Artforum and Contemporary Art Daily.
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Mariah Dekkenga
MARIAH DEKKENGA (b. 1978 in Marathon, Wisconsin) lives between Doha, Qatar & Randolph, VT. She has held solo and two-person exhibitions at SITUATIONS, New York; Aetopolous Gallery, Athens Greece; Eli Ping Frances Perkins, New York; and Jackie Klempay Gallery, Brooklyn. Selected group exhibitions include Clifton Benevento, New York; Suzanne Geiss, New York; The Hole, New York; Denny Gallery, New York; and The Fire Station, Doha, Qatar. She graduated from The University of Iowa with a MFA in 2008 and has since participated in residencies at the Babayan Culture House in Cappadocia, Turkey; Takt Kunstraum Tapir in Berlin; and Officina Stamperia del Notaio in Tusa, Spain. Her work is held in the collections of QMA Qatar Museums, Doha Qatar, Aïshti Foundation Collection, Beirut, Lebanon, JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY, and the Collection of the US Embassy in Nogales, Mexico.
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Estefania Puerta
ESTEFANIA PUERTA (b. in Manizales, Colombia) lives and works in Burlington, VT and New York City. She received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT (2018), where she was awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, and a BS from the University of Vermont, Burlington, VT (2010). She has held exhibitions at SITUATIONS, NYC; BCA, Burlington, VT; Yale University Green Hall Gallery, New Haven, CT; Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; 263 Bowery, New York, NY; New City Galerie, Burlington, VT. In 2019 she was a resident of Shandaken at Storm King Art Center, New York.
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Jackie Klempay
Jackie Klempay is the owner and director of SITUATIONS, a gallery based in New York City. Since 2010 Klempay has championed the work of emerging and overlooked artists with group and solo exhibitions, publications, and public presentations. She has additionally curated exhibitions for White Columns, New York; Aetopolous, Athens; Safe Gallery, Brooklyn; MASS Gallery, Austin, TX; and Golestani Gallery, Düsseldorf. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, amongst others. Klempay is a member of NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) and a board member of poetry imprint The Song Cave.
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AVAILABLE WORKS
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LaKela Brown, Composition with Doorknocker Earrings I, 2020
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LaKela Brown, Composition with Doorknocker Earrings II, 2020
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Mariah Dekkenga, Untitled, 2019
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Mariah Dekkenga, Untitled, 2018
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Estefania Puerta, Look at her Laughing, Like a Hifer to the Slaughter, 2017
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Estefania Puerta, Take Your Time She´s Only Burning, 2017
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FURORE: LaKela Brown, Mariah Dekkenga, Estefania Puerta
Past viewing_room