Fore brochure by The Studio Museum in Harlem

The Studio Museum in Harlem 1

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fore

INSIDE OF FRONT COVER

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Organized by Lauren Haynes, Naima J. Keith and Thomas J. Lax, Assistant Curators at the Studio Museum, Fore continues the Studio Museum’s mission as the nexus for artists of African descent, locally, nationally and internationally, and for work inspired by black culture.

The artists in Fore work in different media, often blending artistic practices in new and innovative ways. While some artists create large-scale oil paintings, others draw on top of photographs, or combine sculpture and two-dimensional work. Many of the artworks were made especially for this exhibition— some are site-specific and react directly to the Harlem neighborhood and its social landscape. In one project, materials and debris from 125th Street are incorporated into an installation; another project shows a film of a performance in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park. Several artists choose to engage live performance, interacting with audiences and adapting the work to the environment in which it is presented. To provide a platform for the new and commissioned performances in Fore, the Museum will host perFOREmance: two three-day performance presentations in December 2012 and February 2013.

cover — Sienna Shields, Untitled, 2010-12 next page — Steffani Jemison, The Escaped Lunatic (video still), 2010-11

“Fore” as a word, an exclamation and a concept can mean many things. It is a warning to those in the path of a moving object, indicating forward momentum. It represents beginnings and the state of preceding an event, as in “before,” or being in front or ahead of a place or time, as in “at the fore.” Taking these different definitions as its starting point, the exhibition Fore presents twenty-nine emerging artists born between 1971 and 1987, who live and work across the United States. Generating ideas at the forefront of contemporary visual culture, together these artists re-imagine art and its relationship to society.

taking into account social, political and cultural conditions in the United States. Whether gathering and assembling everyday objects, referencing urban architecture and economies, or using film and video to mirror the transmission and reception of information through social media, the artists in Fore emphasize that contemporary art is deeply tied to its location, time and historical context. This exhibition investigates questions at the core of the Studio Museum’s mission, exploring art’s relationship to U.S. and global communities.

top — Jacolby Satterwhite, Model It (performance still), 2012 Photo: Sarah Stuve

Fore is the fourth in a series of emerging artist exhibitions presented by the Studio Museum, following Freestyle (2001), Frequency (2005– 06) and Flow (2008). This exhibition traces the development of artistic ideas since Flow, 3

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fore

INSIDE OF FRONT COVER

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cover — Sienna Shields, Untitled, 2010-12 next page — Steffani Jemison, The Escaped Lunatic (video still), 2010-11

top — Jacolby Satterwhite, Model It (performance still), 2012 Photo: Sarah Stuve

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artists in the exhibition

Firelei Báez b. 1980, Santiago, Dominican Republic Lives and works in New York, NY top — Sadie Barnette, Untitled (Boombox), 2012

The women featured in Firelei Báez’s colorful gouache drawings exude attitude and power in their confrontational poses. Incorporating a diverse set of references, ranging from British punk to Caribbean history and culture, Báez is interested in moments of spectacle, entertainment and violence. The towering, voluptuous figures in her series “Geographic Delay” (2012) are decked out in festive regalia, inspired in part by Brooklyn’s annual West Indian Day Parade. The colorful, at times raucous celebration of Caribbean heritage stands as a less solemn reminder of the region’s troubled colonial past. Her body of work included in Fore, Blind Man’s Bluff: On Francisco de Goya’s manipulations of the elusive mirror and the Twerk Team’s eventual annihilation and production of both (2012), uses as its source YouTube videos of camera phone–recorded fights, informally known as “wildings.” Báez isolates the figures, which she paints on recycled book pages, in violent flux, while softening the resonance of their original contexts, filling their diminutive silhouettes with vibrant, floral patterns. Báez layers personal and cultural history onto each page she paints, her characters’ bodies dislocated from specific times and places as they float in each page’s neutral pictorial space. (Jamillah James) Sadie Barnette b. 1984, Oakland, CA Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA In Untitled (Boombox) (2012) and Untitled 6

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right — Kevin Beasley, Untitled (Sink) (detail), 2010 LEFT — Firelei Báez, Psychopomp (detail of Prescribed Seduction), 2012

(Record Player) (2012), Sadie Barnette places obsolete audio equipment, painted pristinely white, in neat patches of dirt. Emphasizing the material culture of hip-hop, she refers to the genre’s origins in the 1970s and 1980s while suggesting its economies and urban landscapes. Born and raised on the West Coast, Barnette uses the visual culture of the region as her immediate local reference, isolating and fragmenting its symbols and imagery. Drawing upon post-Minimalist artist Robert Smithson’s material use of rocks and dirt—his interest in the relationship between the “sites” of outdoor locations and their “non-site” representations in galleries—Barnette questions what the specific materials and detritus of Oaklandbased hip-hop culture represents when dislocated to the space of a New York museum in 2012. Through photography-based installation, zines, performance, drawing and assemblage, Barnette explores how a distinct object such as a boom box can transcend from the universal to the specific. Interested in nostalgia, consumerism and youthfulness, she assembles a precise range of objects—glass tumblers, air fresheners, found photographs—to trigger viewers’ personal associations. The

installations blend a slick, Minimalist-inflected aesthetic with material glitz: rainbows, glitter. However, unlike many artists associated with Minimalism, Barnette alludes to everyday experiences—parties, car rides, walks down a city street—to which local and non-local viewers alike can relate. (Abbe Schriber) Kevin Beasley b. 1985, Alexandria, VA Lives and works in New York, NY Kevin Beasley creates sculptural installations composed of found materials and refuse. Interested in the relationship between the art object and the viewer’s body, Beasley often situates his objects below eye level, directly on the floor or in the corners and crevices of gallery settings. Untitled (2012) consists of a biomorphic sculpture—wetlooking with varnish, resembling organic waste—placed in a discarded sink Beasley found in a Detroit warehouse. Referencing the consumption and decay of contemporary post-industrial cities and lifestyles, Beasley calls attention to our own physical vulnerability and the industrial materials that impact

quality of life in urban contexts. His works draw on personal affect and ownership, implying the histories of found and assembled artifacts such as clothing, toiletries and shoe soles. The four-foot-long Untitled (Sack) (2012), made of a material that evokes glossy sofa leather or the plastic sheen of automobile seats, appears to be both contained and bursting. Through binding, encasing, compressing or otherwise manipulating his sculptures, Beasley creates a resonance with the contours and molds of the body. Beasley also creates works in sound that are similarly invested in physical presence. In Listening Room: Discrepant Origins/ Acousmatics and Ill Perceptions (2012), conceived for the Studio Museum’s theater, presenters picked by the artist play a selection of mixed, layered or sequenced sound within a strict time limit. The audience, who cannot enter or leave once the performance begins, experiences both a collective and intimate submersion in uninterrupted sonic exploration. (AS) 7

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artists in the exhibition

Firelei Báez b. 1980, Santiago, Dominican Republic Lives and works in New York, NY top — Sadie Barnette, Untitled (Boombox), 2012

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right — Kevin Beasley, Untitled (Sink) (detail), 2010 LEFT — Firelei Báez, Psychopomp (detail of Prescribed Seduction), 2012

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Crystal Z. Campbell b. 1980, Prince George’s County, MD Lives and works in New York, NY and Amsterdam, The Netherlands Crystal Z. Campbell’s short video Futures for Failures (2011) features the implosion of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, cited by many urban planners as an urban renewal failure. The artist manipulates and reverses a found video of the demolition, to which she then adds a voice-over track. As the speaker describes a time when she laughed at a funeral, the casual way she recounts this social impropriety contrasts with the video’s attempts at memorialization. The artist often looks to conflicting narratives and moments of confusion, which for her are ways of denying the viewer a clear interpretation of failed or traumatic historical moments. In her works in sound and video, she often appropriates archival footage that has been widely circulated, interpreted and discussed, and whose meaning has already been determined in many ways. Other figures Campbell has examined include Deandre Brunston, a Los Angeles man who engaged police officers in an extended standoff, ultimately resulting in his death; Laura Nelson, a female slave whose lynching was photographed and circulated in the South on postcards; and, most recently, Jim Jones, the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, who orchestrated a group suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Campbell explores the collective dimensions of these individual circumstances, implicating the viewer as a witness and thus a participant in their forms of representation. (JJ) Caitlin Cherry b. 1987, Chicago, IL Lives and works in New York, NY The figures at the center of Caitlin Cherry’s paintings are “golems,” named after creatures from Jewish folklore, that are made from inanimate materials. Modeling her subjects from clay in her studio, she later poses them for the portraits she paints. The fantastic figures are neutral in appearance, save for the occasional smear of lipstick, as seen in 8

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Lipstick and Braces (2011), or handlebar moustache, in Queen Victoria Royale (Poker Face) (2012). Substituting the creatures for human subjects is a way for Cherry’s figures to have characteristics that allude to realist social categories, such as race or gender but not to be confined by them. Alternately, Cherry introduces other objects, such as furniture and children’s toys, to suggest the human form; together, these elements form what Cherry refers to as “painting installations.” Loser Therapy (2011), for example, uses an upholstered divan as a support for Cherry’s grafittied canvas. Throughout, Cherry injects play, humor and irreverence into the timeworn medium of portraiture. (JJ) Jamal Cyrus b. 1973, Houston, TX Lives and works in Houston, TX A founding member of Houston-based artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, Jamal Cyrus investigates, through sculpture, collage and performance, the relationship between music and political ideologies in national and global contexts. In a recent performance, Texas Fried Tenor (2012), a part of a larger series of works entitled “How to Work the Saxophone,” the artist deep-fries a saxophone, while reciting an improvised passage. In his sculptures Conga Bomba (2007) and New Ghosts (2009), Cyrus modifies brass instruments and drums—staples of American jazz, which has its roots in African and black Southern musical traditions. Cyrus also engages the history of black organizations and collectives. For Pride Records, an ongoing project based on a fictional narrative about a black record company under government surveillance circa 1965, he alters record covers through collage, and produces largescale graphite reproductions of declassified documents. Cyrus examines the tension between subversive acts and historical narrative, and moments that may have been erased or forgotten over time. (JJ)

top — Jamal Cyrus, FA/TA/HA, 2011 left — Crystal Z. Campbell, Futures for Failures (video still), 2011 bottom — Caitlin Cherry, Queen Victoria Royale (Prince Albert Piercing) (detail), 2012

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top — Jamal Cyrus, FA/TA/HA, 2011 left — Crystal Z. Campbell, Futures for Failures (video still), 2011 bottom — Caitlin Cherry, Queen Victoria Royale (Prince Albert Piercing) (detail), 2012

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discarded items. DeVille’s formal choices explore abjection in equal measure with unexpected moments of delicacy, beauty and introspection. (JJ) Zachary Fabri b. 1977, Miami, FL Lives in New York, NY Zachary Fabri uses the street as a space for artistic action, building on the work of artists such as Adrian Piper and William Pope.L. Fabri’s contribution to Fore—Forget me not, as my tether is clipped (2012) is a 16mm film in which the artist tied a group of red balloons to his dreadlocks and proceeded to cut locks of his hair, a few at a time, and let the balloons carry them away. Conducted in Marcus Garvey Park and 125th Street in Harlem, this performance captures on film is part of a series of works that centralize Harlem, where the artist lived during the tenyear period in which he grew out his hair. The artist describes the work as a lyrical treatise on the idea of letting things go, as well as on the possibility of ideological transformation.

Noah Davis b. 1983, Seattle, WA Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA Pulled from an eclectic array of sources, the figures in Noah Davis’s paintings exist on flattened planes of muted colors, sometimes receding into their settings. This use of space and sense of composition speaks to Davis’s refusal of painterly illusion and his reinvestment in notions of realism. His subjects and scenarios are people and experiences he has encountered in real life and appear almost just as he experienced them, sometimes embellished by his imagination. Found Photo (2012) is a nearly monochromatic portrait of a young black male, painted from a snapshot. Davis transforms the ephemerality of the candid photo into an object for posterity. By transferring the image from one medium to another, the artist considers the representation of black men both in the history of painting as well as in popular culture. (JJ) Abigail DeVille b. 1981, New York, NY Lives and works in New York, NY In Abigail DeVille’s installation and sculpture, experience and memory are stratified in layers of discarded materials collected by the artist. Tarps, shopping carts, destroyed frames and cigarette butts are signatures of DeVille’s work. DeVille 10

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top left — Noah Davis, Found Photo, 2012 top right — Abigail DeVille, Invisible Men: Beyond the Veil (detail), 2012 bottom right — Zachary Fabri, Chanting Black Clouds (video still), 2010 opposite page — Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, The Infestation, 2012

has created a number of works that make use of her and her family’s personal materials, particularly those belonging to her grandmother. For Invisible Men: Beyond the Veil (2012), DeVille lined the wall and floor of the site with layers of broken drywall, cracked records, trash bags and linoleum tiles the artist collected from her grandmother’s Bronx apartment. Hooverville Torqued Ellipse (2012), an installation the artist created in Philadelphia, references Minimalist sculptor Richard Serra’s “Torqued Ellipse” series (1998–2003), replacing Serra’s iconic steel with salvaged cardboard. DeVille’s accumulative technique is reminiscent of Russian artist Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away (1988), an installation she cites as a major influence, in which Kabakov filled a London apartment with garbage and

The other performances in the series include a staged sing-along, in which Fabri functions as a Pied Piper, creating jingles with passersby. For another performance, Fabri poses as a worker at the mega-store Target in East Harlem (also known as “Spanish Harlem”), with the intent of steering patrons to support fledgling mom-and-pop ventures. Part agitprop, part whimsy, the artist’s “Harlem Performances” draw on a variety of aesthetic and political techniques, including guerrilla theater, community sustainability and spiritual practice to draw attention to specific local conditions, while articulating universal ideals of prosperity and social advancement. (JJ) Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle b. 1987, Louisville, KY Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle uses drawing, photography and historical research to further her investigations of colonial imagery and display of the female body. In her series 11

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“The Uninvited” (2012), she brings these concepts to the surface through intricate drawings atop copies of ethnographic photographs. The photographs exemplify the biased colonial view of African women in the nineteenth century, depicting them in a limited and repetitive range of poses. Reproduced on postcards that were popular and accessible throughout Europe, the photographs helped perpetuate the vision of African female bodies as “exotic.” The spread of these viewpoints is visualized in Hinkle’s drawings and markings, which mimic the repetition and circular, modular forms of disease or viral reproduction. Her squiggles, doodles and etched markings convert the women into grotesque creatures, recalling narratives of the fantastical “Other” through aggressive formal exaggeration. (AS)

blackness, masculinity and family structures within an urban prism. (JJ) Eric Nathaniel Mack b. 1987, Columbia, MD Lives and works in New York, NY Eric Nathaniel Mack alters articles of clothing, scraps of found cloth and pieces of utilitarian textiles in his work. By re-presenting these textiles, Mack references the work of artists such as Sam Gilliam, Robert Rauschenberg and David Hammons, who have challenged painting’s limitations and conventions with their material experimentations.

Steffani Jemison b. 1981, Berkeley, CA Lives and works in New York, NY In videos, photo-based objects, participatory projects and performances, Steffani Jemison examines the power and political implications of written and verbal traditions in AfricanAmerican culture. She also explores how these traditions are tied to uncertainty, expectation, aspiration and self-empowerment. Her most recent work, the performance You Completes Me (2012), is composed of lines excerpted from street fiction and collaged into a poetic script, which is read aloud by a performer. Depending on the performance, the narration is juxtaposed with imagery, such as a film or soundscape. The plot and structure of the performance mirrors the narrative arcs of street fiction novels, as well as the themes explored within them— material wealth, existential angst, romantic relationships, and spiritual and social uplift. The hopeful, hypothetical tones of You Completes Me are echoed in the videos The Escaped Lunatic (2010−11) and Maniac Chase (2008−09). The videos follow young men running through the same landscape over and over again, hinting at attempts to escape from static, unchanging environments. Inspired by the popular motif of “the chase” in early twentieth-century film, implied in 12

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her videos’ titles, Jemison draws a parallel to current events footage. (AS) Yashua Klos b. 1977, Chicago, IL Lives and works in New York, NY

top — Yashua Klos, Rock Garden We Live In, 2012 middle — Eric Nathaniel Mack, Electric Blanket, 2012 bottom — Steffani Jemison, Maniac Chase (video still), 2008–09 opposite page — Harold Mendez, Let the Shadows in to play their part, 2012

Yashua Klos’s large-scale collaged woodblock and relief prints are at once figurative and abstract. For example, Rock Garden We Live In (2012) shows an upward-gazing face emerging from a pile of rubble. In Black Hand Holding Unidentified Geometric Object (2010), a collection of bricks, rocks and wood form the shape of a hand. A head emerges from a rock formation in Naturally Occurring Floating Stalagmite 1 (2009), differentiated from surrounding textures only by a shock of facial hair at its edge. Klos engages ideas of transcendence and escape from social and economic realities, themes often explored in black cultural production, from scholar W.E.B. Du Bois to Afrofuturism. Composites of identity and environment, Klos’s work are steeped in memory and biography, laden with references to cosmology and otherworldly realities. Klos’s printed reproductions of detritus, collaged with faces, disembodied limbs and eyes speak to the constant fracturing and reconciliation of

In Honey hollow (2012) Mack uses the holes in pegboard as a stencil to apply paint onto a moving blanket, which is installed next to a fan. Adhering grommets and buttons, he replicates the circular shape of the paint and the material reference to apparel on the blanket. The blanket moves in response to the box fan’s whirl, imitating the idea of “gesture” associated with abstract painting while also adding a kinetic dimension to the work. (JJ) Harold Mendez b. 1977, Chicago, IL Lives and works in Chicago, IL Harold Mendez’s Let the Shadows in to play their part and We were alike and worse than mirrors of each other (both 2012) are comprised of dryer sheets, saturated with black spray paint, ink, dyes and graphite, arranged in a grid on paper. In cascading gradations of black and gray, both works are examples of Mendez’s ongoing interest in and experimentation with ordinary materials. Gathering used objects found in Chicago laundromats, the artist alludes to symbols of hygiene and waste. Likewise, his choice of titles evokes mystery and the embodiment of simultaneous presence and absence. The artist’s works on paper investigate a wide range of complex philosophical questions of being and existence through a deceptively simple visual language. Using dark and discarded matter, he gives new form to monochrome, used by many abstract pain13

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her videos’ titles, Jemison draws a parallel to current events footage. (AS) Yashua Klos b. 1977, Chicago, IL Lives and works in New York, NY

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ters across the twentieth century to consider the status of painting as a medium and its relationship to specific cultural contexts. (JJ) Nicole Miller b. 1982, Tucson, AZ Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA Nicole Miller creates multi-channel video installations that reflect the fragmentation and multiplicity of personal history. In the two-channel video Daggering (2012), Miller juxtaposes footage of the Caribbean dancehall trend “daggering,” in which dancers simulate sexual interactions, with footage of the artist performing ballet exercises— the artist’s first appearance in her own videos. The daggering footage was filmed in a nightclub in Brooklyn. Her camera lingering on male and female dancers’ agile bodies, Miller reveals the shifts of control and agency as they pair off or perform solo. The spontaneity and uninhibited movement of daggering contrasts with the rigidity and formality of ballet, and the narration that links both channels. The speaker, in a proper and restrained voice, relays coming-of-age tales of desire and humiliation, mixing fiction with autobiographical details drawn from Miller’s experiences. As the two forms of dance are brought together visually, the speaker’s voice adds a new narrative of identity and emergent womanhood, troubling the imagery juxtaposed onscreen. Like previous video works The Conductor (2009) and Untitled (David and Darby) (2012), Daggering uses the moving image to re-imagine and reconstruct interpretations of self. (AS)

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top — Akosua Adoma Owusu, Anancy (film still), 2012

Narcissister b. 1971, New York, NY Lives and works in New York, NY Visual and performance artist Narcissister complicates popular notions of the female body, and reclaiming femininity as perceived in television, cinema, burlesque, vaudeville and queer camp. Masked and muted, Narcissister makes actions that nonetheless reveal a scathing wit, often in the form of tasks that are physically rigorous and at times abject. Whether pulling objects from bodily orifices, personifying female genitalia or riding a bicycle with a built-in sex toy, she illuminates the pressures, hardships and fantasies of the female body through performance. top left — Nicole Miller, Daggering (video still), 2012 top RIGHT — Narcissister, Untitled (Zagreb), 2009 bottom RIGHT — Toyin Odutola, Above all else make it look effortless, 2012

Narcissister’s carnivalesque props and costumes are integral to an understanding of her work, overtly exaggerating the trappings of womanhood through deliberately tacky, highly stylized materials sourced from flea markets, thrift stores and the street. Her 2009 series of large-scale color photographs, “Untitled (from Zagreb),” constructs stilllifes from such found ephemera, implying

that female sexuality and identification is itself costumed, constructed and imposed. Narcissister engages a long history of camp and queer performance art by artists of color, such as Vaginal Davis, while her deliberate, confrontational use of the body inscribes her within a history of feminist performance that includes Carolee Schneemann, Eleanor Antin, Karen Finley and Kembra Pfahler. (AS) Toyin Odutola b. 1985, Ife, Nigeria Lives and works in San Francisco, CA Toyin Odutola’s figures, luminous with luster and shine, nearly pop out of their twodimensional planes. Created with several different types of ballpoint pen, acrylic ink and marker on board or panel, Odutola’s portraits are both aesthetic and conceptual investigations of “black” via the reflective surface of skin. Fastidious and detailed in her process, Odutola first shades her subjects’ faces and bodies with washes of color, then etches over them with precise grooves of the pen, implying defined sinew and muscle. The figures are simultaneously hyperrealistic and silhouetted into abstraction—parts of facial features become lost in the inky darkness of skin, even as single hairs or eyelashes are meticulously drawn and articulated. The 15

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top — Akosua Adoma Owusu, Anancy (film still), 2012

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assured. They stare back, close their eyes or turn their backs to the viewer’s gaze. Often people of color, Packer’s sitters range from family members to classmates and friends. In their casual attire and ease, the subjects of Packer’s paintings complicate the artist’s more traditional approach to composition, which is influenced by Renaissance and Post-Impressionist painting. The loose brush strokes, neutral tones and muddled backgrounds frame her figures, whose clothes are rendered in radiant color and careful detail. The furniture and settings featured in the paintings are also important since the chair, from Packer’s studio, is the thread that connects her portraits. An ottoman, empty lavatory and common space also surface as subjects, alluding to absent figures. With these scenes, Packer acknowledges still-lifes and portraiture as enduringly viable. How her figures are positioned in the paintings closes off possible points of identification or interaction with them, in turn preserving some mystery around the people and moments she’s chosen to immortalize. (JJ)

resulting tonal curves and gradations hint at a complicated character beneath the surface. (AS) Akosua Adoma Owusu b. 1984, Alexandria, VA Lives and works in Alexandria, VA and Ghana Akosua Adoma Owusu creates films and videos that blend popular culture, music and mythology from both West African and American sources, examining the crossover and exchange of cultural representation in the contemporary African diaspora. Her videos range from documentaries to pastiche to experimental abstraction. For Fore, Owusu displays outtakes from a new film called Anancy (2012), converted as film stills onto slides and shown from a slide projector. The film uses the traditional tale, 16

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Taisha Paggett b. 1976, Los Angeles, CA Lives and works in Chicago, IL and Los Angeles, CA

top — Jennifer Packer, Mario II, 2012 opposite page top — Taisha Paggett, Decomposition of a Continuous Whole (performance still), 2009 Photo: Vox Populi, Philadelphia bottom — Valerie Piraino, Nom de Plume (installation view), 2011

believed to have originated in Ghanaian culture, of Anansi (also known as Ananse or Kwaku Ananse). Drawing on this narrative, Owusu explores the parallels and differences of merging cultures, using the double-sided trickster character of Kwaku Ananse, halfspider and half-man, as a guiding metaphor. In Anancy, as in her other films, Owusu blends lush, colorful imagery with diverse musical accompaniment. She has investigated

cross-cultural pollination in other ways, for instance through examinations of beauty practices and their relationship to racial politics. Her cinematic vision encompasses the increasing ubiquity and lingering unease of transnational identity. (AS) Jennifer Packer b. 1984, Philadelphia, PA Lives and works in New York, NY The often intimate scale of Jennifer Packer’s paintings contrast with the forthright attitude and confidence of her figures, who sit in varying degrees of repose—relaxed and self-

In her performance practice, dance artist Taisha Paggett experiments with bodies as sites for creating meaning and defining spatial awareness. Paggett’s commissioned performance for Fore, verse chorus (2012), was developed for the Studio Museum’s theater and draws heavily on repetition, using repeated movements that she conceives of as the “chorus,” and variations on these movements, called “verses.” Through this use of repetition, Paggett reflects the pervasive sound and movement structures of pop music, such as Auto-Tune, and popular, mass-produced dance forms that are distilled and included in step aerobics and Zumba. Works such as Decomposition of a Continuous Whole (2009–12) explore notions of identity and visibility in the performing arts canon. In Decomposition, Paggett is blindfolded and attempts to draw a straight horizon line directly on the gallery wall, continuing to forge the link between drawing and gesture, 17

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Taisha Paggett b. 1976, Los Angeles, CA Lives and works in Chicago, IL and Los Angeles, CA

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Nikki Pressley b. 1982, Greenville, SC Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

and action and movement, issues at the core of modern art history. The work calls to mind artist Carolee Schneemann’s Up To and Including Her Limits (1973–76), in which the artist drew on the walls with crayon while raising and lowering herself in a harness, recording the performative, physical process of drawing. Paggett’s works are invested in a larger exploration of everyday life and community, which she achieves through incorporating interdisciplinary elements beyond dance or visual art. (AS) Valerie Piraino b. 1981, Kigali, Rwanda Lives and works in New York, NY Valerie Piraino’s site-specific installations layer fragments from domestic interiors and slide projections to construct tableaux of memory and personal narrative. Piraino inherited an archive of family slides and has since incorporated these images into her work. While the images the artist uses are personal, she emphasizes the way they are presented more than the people or places in them. She refers to the results of her overlapping technique and conceptual premise as “frustrated images.” As the boundaries of individual images are confused, their visual content foregrounds the feeling and atmosphere of the installation as a whole. The display of specific materials and anonymous objects with unknown histories in a museum setting collapses the perceived boundaries between private and public space. (JJ)

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top left — Nikki Pressley, Mass, 2012 top right — Jacolby Satterwhite, Model It (video still), 2012 bottom — Sienna Shields, Untitled, 2010–12 opposite page — Kianja Strobert, Untitled, 2012

Working between sculpture, installation and design, Nikki Pressley conveys traditions of self-reliance, endurance and belonging in black culture. Inspired by Caribbean writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant’s idea of the “poetics of relation,” she explores individual and collective identity through location, lifestyle and notions of home. Often, Pressley’s installations reveal a desire to reframe, invert or transform an object’s function. Her new works, custom handmade furniture, literally spout domestic mementos (plants, archival imagery, maps) from their shelves and compartments. The furniture creates small, specific networks of intimacy, even as the collected imagery remains anonymous and generalized. Invoking larger responsibilities to community, Pressley’s functional sculptures also include self-written pamphlets and guides to sustainable living and “do-it-yourself” agriculture. Examining the overlap of design and politicized language in the work Mass (2012), Pressley ties crumpled picket signs, remnants of a bygone protest, into a form that resembles an anarchic chandelier. Encouraging viewers to become actively engaged in their communities, Pressley’s objects offer a multitude of identifications and positions. (AS) Jacolby Satterwhite b. 1986, Columbia, SC Lives and works in New York, NY, and Provincetown, MA Jacolby Satterwhite combines video, 3-D animation, drawing and found photography into holistic installations and performances. Reifying Desire: Model It (2012), created for Fore, employs a two-channel video installation, projected into a corner and depicting the artist’s dancing body against an animated, computerized backdrop. Satterwhite has also created a custom platform for live, unannounced and ambient performance in the galleries, providing an arena for his recent performance practices—including the integration of a live camera feed that projects video as he moves. In Reifying Desire: Model It

as in his other video installations, Satterwhite includes floating digital tracings of drawings done by his mother, Patricia Satterwhite— designs inspired by household objects and toiletries—interspersed into the background. Satterwhite makes deliberate connections between his artistic practice and his mother’s, in the process complicating the psychological and cultural lineages of matriarchy. His solo movements, performed in front of a green screen, literalize this connection through miming the actions and gestures associated with his mother’s drawn objects, as does his hand-tracing from drawing to animation. In his newer bodies of work, Satterwhite has begun to think about urban versus natural environments: from crowded, claustrophobic cities to green, open spaces. Satterwhite continues his investigation of the porousness between real, virtual and spiritual, as well as the intimate relationship between performance and object. (AS) Sienna Shields b. 1976, Rainbow, AK Lives and works in New York, NY and Rainbow, AK In her large-scale collage paintings, Sienna 19

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Nikki Pressley b. 1982, Greenville, SC Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

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Kianja Strobert b. 1980, New York, NY Lives and works in Hudson, NY

Shields layers delicate, paint-spattered fragments of paper into dense, abstract collages. Painted with vivid color and intricate texture, the paper shards coalesce into what resembles topographic maps articulating unspecific landscapes. Shields is inspired by the material culture of mapping and urban expansion, the rapidly shifting landscape of city blocks and how they are demarcated by city planners or others documenting gentrification. Intrigued by historical documents and archival research, Shields looked at vintage fire insurance maps, among other ephemera, to inform her work. These maps include illustrations of changing neighborhoods that are pasted on top of each other, creating a literal layering of urban history. Past works have examined the physical landscape of New York, as well as the artist’s home state of Alaska. The collages evoke not just topographic terrain, but also the expansive color fields of abstract painting and the dynamic composition of mosaics. (AS)

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Kianja Strobert engages the language and history of twentieth-century painting while working against many of the ideas associated with it. For example, Strobert is uninterested in monumentality or the totalizing language of the “masterpiece,” as embraced by abstraction of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Rather, she methodically and repetitively works through the materiality of paint, experimenting with gesture, texture and color as inherent yet malleable conditions of the medium. In her newer series of works, swirls of warm reds and oranges layer and intermingle with swaths of muted gray. In one work, quick daubs of expressionist strokes contrast with a straight, narrow line that cuts a vertical swath through the paint, not unlike the famous “zips” of painter Barnett Newman. In another, Strobert isolates splotches of color on the paper, where they faintly resemble numbers or letters, echoes of Jasper Johns’s representations of signage. Despite the absence of figuration, Strobert’s hand and gesture are palpable, revealing physicality embedded in the textured surface. Seen in tandem, the paintings are meant to work as experimental serial variations that provide an increased focus on materials. (AS) Jessica Vaughn b. 1983, Chicago, IL Lives and works in New York, NY Jessica Vaughn’s work acts and reflects on the social, political and labor histories of contemporary American cities. Vaughn uses photography, installation and the occasional choreographed performance as vehicles for activism. Repurposed and Distributed (2012) allows viewers to take a copy of one of her prints. The idea of takeaways builds on a history of radical interventions within the museum, employed notably by Conceptual artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Once all of the reproduced materials have been taken, the work ceases to exist in its originally realized physical form. Left with only the idea of what the

installation once was, viewers of her posters will only be left with her intellectual property. Like pamphlets distributed on a street corner —an action Vaughn appropriated in the performance Fireball (2012)—the prints from Re-purposed carry the politics behind their production. Indeed, her images are rich with unexpected juxtapositions, as well as race and class implications: a tiara held overhead in front of the backlit menu of a Chinese food restaurant, a striped nylon tricolor flag leaning against aluminum siding, a banker’s box against a starry backdrop. The casual associations between the objects present in Vaughn’s photographs allow viewers to engage the complex constructions of class and social order Vaughn critiques through an economy of visual language. (JJ) Cullen Washington Jr. b. 1976, Alexandria, LA Lives and works in New York, NY Cullen Washington Jr.’s Caped Crusader and Black Moon Rising (both 2011), on view in Fore, are assemblages of discarded materials, collected and constructed on canvas. The

opposite page — Jessica Vaughn, Diamond, 2012 top — Nate Young, Closing No. 1, 2012

surfaces Washington paints, draws and places collage upon are generally free from its traditional supports. Sometimes, they hang on the wall; other times, they come off the wall and sag onto the floor. Caped Crusader makes use of a neon T-Mobile sign, whose upper half—painted and covered extensively with shiny black graphite—is attached to the wall. In Black Moon Rising, a canvas hangs from a wooden beam that leans against a wall, referencing the stretcher bar of a painting’s frame. Washington injects his work, which exists between painting and sculpture, with references to alienation. The titles of Washington’s works often refer to outer space, the romanticized next frontier of science, literature, film and art. His extensive use of graphite helps one visualize the materials and images embedded there as floating in the great unknown. (JJ) 21

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Kianja Strobert b. 1980, New York, NY Lives and works in Hudson, NY

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opposite page — Jessica Vaughn, Diamond, 2012 top — Nate Young, Closing No. 1, 2012

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Young inhabits and performs two nontraditional roles for an artist: one of a magician and the other of a preacher. In Post Black Magic (2010), and a series of subsequent videos and objects, Young employs sleight of hand and disappearance—two deceptive gestures used to lure audiences into an altered state of consciousness, highlighting the tension between what is seen and what is ignored when disbelief is suspended. Two white gloves are the only traces of Young’s presence, as he has disappeared into the saturated blackness of the video frame. The installation in this exhibition, Closing No. 1 (2012), uses a church pew and a recording of a man delivering a feverishly intense speech about painting, with a tone and inflection similar to that of a preacher. For some, religion can be interpreted as a relationship to unseen forces, which constitutes a belief system, much like secular magic. The enterprise of making art also involves considerable illusion, leaps of faith and dogma. Young’s diverse practice gives form to the many ways in which we interpret the unexplained phenomena punctuating daily life. (JJ)

opposite page — Cullen Washington Jr., Caped Crusader, 2011 top — Brenna Youngblood, Untitled, 2012

Brenna Youngblood b. 1979, Riverside, CA Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Nate Young b. 1981, Phoenixville, PA Lives and works in St. Paul, MN Representations of constellations, magic and rhetoric are central to Nate Young’s conceptual practice. In his 2012 series “Constellations,” cosmological imagery 22

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appears alongside lyrics from popular songs. Placing these unrelated elements into conversation highlights how language and other systems of communication can affect interpersonal relationships. This idea continues in his “Magic, Illusion and Rhetorical Tactics” series (2010), where

Brenna Youngblood incorporates paintings, objects and assemblage into layered works that reveal the histories, traces and documents of the world around her. She arranges found ephemera and photographic imagery onto her canvases, intentionally placing cultural materials in conversation with painted abstraction. Youngblood is also concerned with gesture and the mark of the artist. As she depicts the material conditions of our environments, Youngblood uses the very physical presence of paint to reveal the subjectivity of the artist in recording or breaking down history, simulated in her strategies of collage. In addition to this documenting of cultural context, Youngblood’s canvases stratify the coating, uncovering and stripping of surfaces in the urban context —comprising signage, posters, advertisements and other detritus. (AS) 23

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opposite page — Cullen Washington Jr., Caped Crusader, 2011 top — Brenna Youngblood, Untitled, 2012

Brenna Youngblood b. 1979, Riverside, CA Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

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perFOREmance

december 2012 Narcissister New Works Thursday, December 13, 7 pm Brooklyn-based visual and performance artist Narcissister creates provocative yet playful vignettes that reference neo-burlesque and employ a range of materials, including fashion accessories, fake body parts, handmade props, larger-than-life costumes and her own, often nude, body. Heir to Narcissus, the boy in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool and wasted away from unsatisfied desire, Narcissister excused herself from a career in modern dance to focus on a visual arts practice that explores the relationship between sexuality, race and gender. For perFOREmance, Narcissister will be debuting new work that continues her long-standing interest in challenging conceptions of feminist craft, gender objectification and commodity culture. Kevin Beasley Listening Room: Discrepant Origins/Acousmatics and Ill Perceptions Friday, December 14, 7 pm “Listening Room” is a focused aural event in which a series of presenters share music and sound, and listeners give time to participate in an intimate hearing experience. This edition of “Listening Room,” Discrepant Origins/Acousmatics and Ill Perceptions, investigates acousmatics: sound one hears without seeing an originating cause. Beasley extends the idea —first used by composer Pierre Schaeffer and further developed by music theorist Denis Smalley—and invites presenters to consider the origins of musical and sound qualities, including instrumentation, vocals, samples, keynotes and the signal. Like Beasley’s sculptures, which use common industrial materials that are usually covered by upholstery or textiles, Acousmatics and Ill Perceptions draws attention to ubiquitous materials that ordinarily cannot be seen. No late admittance. Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle The Uninvited: Uncharting the Charted Saturday, December 15, 4 pm and 5 pm Drawing from her long-term interest in language and the slippages it can create between fiction and reality, Los Angeles–based artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle will debut a new performance at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Working with percussionist Chris Taylor 24

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perFOREmance

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and woodwind composer Kevin Robinson, Hinkle will perform a suite of experimental texts and original musical compositions inspired by West African dialects, languages and images of women to explore the complicated relationship between matters of sexuality, race and meditations on place.

poem based on the practitioners of the Texas Tenor saxophone tradition, the experience of improvisation and combustible materials. An earlier version of Texas Fried Tenor was performed in Austin in May 2012 as part of an exhibition of work by finalists for the 2012 Texas Prize.

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Taisha Paggett verse chorus Saturday, February 23, 5 pm

february 2013 Harold Mendez A blurred and generalized projection of you and me, 2012 Thursday, February 21, 6 pm Friday, February 22, 3:30 pm

Choreographer Taisha Paggett’s verse chorus is an evening-length work that deconstructs and makes use of Zumba, the popular dance fitness program. Focusing on the structures of repetition that characterize the aerobics form, the work uses an instructional format to highlight how pop culture creates a sense of shared knowledge. Paggett questions how the dance continues to shape identity and construct a sense of individual self despite the dance’s mass marketing and mass consumption. verse chorus was commissioned on the occasion of Fore.

Harold Mendez’s collaborative-based performance A blurred and generalized projection of you and me explores a Samuel Beckett–like narrative of two characters in a barren and uncertain landscape, and their navigation of selfhood and identity. Mendez uses a multidisciplinary approach to illustrate how identity is constructed, dismantled and then stitched together. The two characters (Braille Teeth and Nobody) represent individuals seeking to transcend boundaries, borders and the trappings of place. Questioning the definitions of representation, specifically in addressing the real and the imaginary, this work attempts to depict a story of the self and the struggle of putting into language how one recognizes, defines and constitutes oneself and the world. Steffani Jemison You Completes Me Friday, February 22, 7:30 pm Saturday, Feburary 23, 1 pm Steffani Jemison’s first live performance, You Completes Me, features Houston-based actor Autumn Knight narrating a long-form poem. Excerpted from street fiction novels, the script is paired with projected images and sound. The performance mirrors the novels’ narrative structure and tropes, as well as their themes of mobility, kinship, violence, prayer and love. Sited in Harlem—where many street fiction novels take place and are widely sold—You Completes Me was commissioned on the occasion of Fore. Jamal Cyrus Texas Fried Tenor Saturday, February 23, 3 pm Texas Fried Tenor is one in a larger performance series entitled “Learning to Work the Saxophone,” based on a lyric from the Steely Dan song “Deacon Blues” (1977), in which Cyrus explores the idea of the instrument as a tool of transcendence and personal expression. During the performance, Cyrus will fry a saxophone while reciting a recipe/ 26

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previous page CLOCKWISE froM TOP LEFT — Taisha Paggett, verse chorus (performance still), 2012 Harold Mendez, A blurred and generalized projection of you and me, 2012 Steffani Jemison, You Completes Me, 2012 Kevin Beasley, The Listening Room, 2012 Narcissister, Mannequin, 2009. Photo: Tony Stamatis Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Nappy Longstockings, 2009 Jamal Cyrus, Texas Fried Tenor (performance still), 2012 27

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Taisha Paggett verse chorus Saturday, February 23, 5 pm

february 2013 Harold Mendez A blurred and generalized projection of you and me, 2012 Thursday, February 21, 6 pm Friday, February 22, 3:30 pm

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public Programs

perFOREmance/december Conversation: Thomas J. Lax in conversation with Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Narcissister and Jacolby Satterwhite Saturday, December 15, 2012 7 pm Assistant Curator Thomas J. Lax moderates a discussion with Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Narcissister and Jacolby Satterwhite as a culmination of their participation in perFOREmance/december. While their practices are distinct, their work shares several similarities. Each artist works in multiple media, performs in contexts both within and beyond the museum and the contemporary art world, and tests the limits of the live body. How do these artists understand ideas of physical presence and bodily capacity? How do different sites affect their approach to making live work? How does performance relate to other media such as drawing, printmaking and photography?

Mythological Creatures and Cultural Resistance: Lauren Haynes in conversation with Firelei Báez, Caitlin Cherry and Yashua Klos Thursday, January 10, 2013 7 pm The artists presented in this conversation construct artworks that operate in space between reality and fantasy. Their mythological creatures emerge from observations of the multiple environments that create the settings for their works. Firelei Báez draws upon Caribbean folklore, interrupting a narrative that privileges social and racial categories, 28

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and inserting characters whose identities are comprised of elements of the human, animal and natural worlds. In her large-scale paintings, Caitlin Cherry uses a golem as an avatar for the human race to explore issues ranging from adolescence to political histories. Yashua Klos’s woodblock collages emerge out of the detritus of the urban landscape, revealing faces, faces that challenge the notion of males as both present and absent in the socially constructed urban core.

Lost and Found: Assistant Curator Naima J. Keith in conversation with Abigail DeVille, Valerie Piraino and Cullen Washington Jr. Thursday, February 7, 2013 7 pm Since the 1960s, assemblage has become emblematic of works that reflect the charged political climate of postwar America. The art form, in which natural and manufactured found materials are assembled into threedimensional structures, was used by artists such Betye Saar and John Outterbridge to produce complex objects that engaged issues including the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam and the censorship of art. For many contemporary artists, found objects have been used for other means. Abigail DeVille employs assemblage, painting and sculpture to make the invisible visible. Valerie Piraino utilizes family memorabilia to create site-specific installations that disrupt our understanding of family history and memory. Several of Cullen Washington Jr.’s works incorporate found objects that bear witness to the Southern culture in which he was born. This lively discussion seeks to question the category of “assemblage” as a critical practice or discursive field, and that addresses specific moments in history and the transformation of assemblage in contemporary art.

perFOREmance/february Conversation: Fred Moten in conversation with Jamal Cyrus, Steffani Jemison and Harold Mendez Thursday, February 21, 2013 7:30 pm Fred Moten—Duke University Helen L. Bevington Professor of Modern Poetry and acclaimed author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (2003)— moderates a discussion with Jamal Cyrus, Steffani Jemison and Harold Mendez to launch their participation in perFOREmance/ february. Building off of Moten’s groundbreaking contributions to performance studies, theories of improvisation and the history of the interdisciplinary black avant-garde, this discussion brings together three artists who have collaborated with one another and will present new performance-based works for Fore.

Please visit studiomuseum.org for updated information and additional events.

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public Programs

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Please visit studiomuseum.org for updated information and additional events.

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Works in the exhibition

Dimensions are in inches; height precedes width precedes depth. All works courtesy the artist, unless otherwise noted. Checklist as of October 20, 2012 Firelei Báez Blind Man’s Bluff: On Francisco de Goya’s manipulations of the elusive mirror and the Twerk Team’s eventual annihilation and production of both, 2012 Gouache, ink, metal leaf and print on found paper Dimensions variable Sadie Barnette Untitled (Boombox), 2012 Vintage cassette player, enamel and dirt 32 × 32 × 10 in. Untitled (Record Player), 2012 Vintage record player, enamel and dirt 22 × 15 × 10 in. Untitled, 2012 Mixed media installation Dimensions variable Kevin Beasley Untitled (Sink), 2012 Laundry bags, felt, resin, sink and tape 33 × 22 × 7 in. 30

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Courtesy the artist and The Butcher’s Daughter, Ferndale, MI Untitled (Sack), 2012 Foam, resin, T-shirt, mattress cover and thermal shirt 51 × 23 × 16 in.

Noah Davis Untitled, 2009 Mixed media on canvas 60 × 60 × 3 1/8 in. (each panel, diptych)

The Uninvited, 2012 Laserjet print on polyethylene film, acrylic paint and India ink 20 × 30 in.

Found Photo, 2011 Screenprint and oil on canvas 40 × 40 in.

The Uninvited: Uncharting the Charted, 2012 Performance

Untitled (FootNeck), 2012 T-shirt, foam and hair clips 12 × 14 × 12 in.

All works courtesy Jack Tilton Gallery, New York

Listening Room: Discrepant Origins/Acousmatics and Ill Perceptions, 2012 Performance

Abigail DeVille Haarlem Tower of Babel, 2012 Reclaimed lumber, accumulated debris and family heirlooms 201.6 × 60 × 192 in.

Crystal Z. Campbell Futures for Failures, 2011 Digital video, color, sound TRT 01:20 Caitlin Cherry The Federal Reserve Bank of New Yawk, 2012 Two painting installation: Super Premium (Silver Coins), 2012 Oil on canvas mounted on custom chopper bicycle with handheld projector 62 × 95 × 20 in. Defection and The Undying Affliction (Gold Bars), 2012 Oil on canvas with projection 74 × 98 in. Jamal Cyrus FA/TA/HA, 2012 Archival digital print on reflective substrate Wood and sandbags 40 × 100 × 40 in. Texas Fried Tenor, 2012 Performance

Zachary Fabri Forget me not, as my tether is clipped, 2012 16mm film transferred to digital video TRT 14:49 Courtesy the artist and Franklin Furnace, New York

Steffani Jemison Maniac Chase, 2008–09 Digital video, color, sound TRT 02:40 The Escaped Lunatic, 2010–11 Digital video, color, sound TRT 08:57 You Completes Me, 2012–13 Performance Yashua Klos Rock Garden We Live In, 2012 Ink and woodblock prints on archival collaged paper 56 × 50 in.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle The Contagion, 2012 Laserjet print on polyethylene film, acrylic paint and India ink 20 × 30 in.

Eric Nathaniel Mack Honey hollow, 2012 Acrylic paint on microfiber blanket and fan 72 × 80 in., 22 × 22 × 7 in.

The Cover Up, 2012 Laserjet print on polyethylene film, acrylic paint and India ink 20 × 30 in.

Harold Mendez Let the Shadows in to play their part, 2012 Mixed-media on paper, fabric softener, transparent spray enamel, watercolor, glue and water soluble ink 50 × 38 in.

The Infestation, 2012 Laserjet print on polyethylene film, acrylic paint and India ink 20 × 30 in.

We were alike and worse than mirrors of each other, 2012 Mixed-media on paper, biaxially oriented insulation

tape, dryer sheets, liquid wax, spray enamel, acrylic paint, water color, glue, water soluble ink, natural dyes (Logwood, Cochineal), graphite, chalk 50 x 38 in.

Toyin Odutola Above all else, make it look effortless, 2012 Pen ink and marker on paper 12 × 9 in. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

A blurred and generalized projection of you and me, 2012 Performance

Estranged relations, 2012 Pen ink and acrylic ink on board 19 × 29 in. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Nicole Miller Daggering, 2012 Two-channel digital video, color, sound TRT 34:00 Narcissister Untitled (from Zagreb), 2009 Chromogenic color print 24 × 17.97 in. Untitled (from Zagreb), 2009 Chromogenic color print 24 × 18 in. Untitled (from Zagreb), 2009 Chromogenic color print 24 × 18.11 in. Untitled (from Zagreb), 2009 Chromogenic color print 24 × 18.02 in. Untitled (from Zagreb), 2009 Chromogenic color print 24 × 17.95 in. Untitled (from Zagreb), 2009 Chromogenic color print 24 × 17.88 in.

What sorts of stories will we leave behind?, 2012 Pen ink and marker on paper 14 ½ × 23 in. Private collection Akosua Adoma Owusu Anancy, 2012 Multimedia installation Dimensions variable Jennifer Packer Joyce, 2012 Oil on canvas 15 × 16 in. Tobi, 2011 Oil on canvas 6 × 12 in. Mario II, 2011 Oil on canvas 42 × 54 in. Ottoman, 2011 Oil on canvas 9 × 11 in. Courtesy Robert Storr

Narcissister: New Works Performance All works courtesy the artist and envoy enterprises, New York