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'eddy', Group Show at M23, New York

You ought to lie in rivers or in ponds
As do the waterweeds which harbour pike.
The body grows light in the water. When your arm
Falls easily from water into sky
The little wind rocks it absentmindedly

[From “Of Swimming in Lakes and Rivers,” by Bertolt Brecht]

An eddy is a spiral, a small vortex, which spins counter to and disrupts the current. Against the great tides of the ocean, or the modest flow of a stream, eddies catch and confuse, addle and amaze. To Bertolt Brecht floating inverts our relationship to the real: we transcend gravity, we “fall into the sky.” Here we see works which similarly push against the currents of our material world, and in doing so call on us to suspend disbelief: in repurposing and recontextualizing media and materials from industrial, domestic, and nonhuman spaces the five artists represented here articulate the fragmented, yet poetic, nature of the present moment.

To those caught in the slipstream of material culture, these works are eddies in the face of capitalism’s incessant flows. Clare Koury’s works repurpose inconspicuous industrial fixtures, forcing a renegotiation of the body’s relationship to the hardware which characterizes banal interiors. Quay Quinn Wolf evokes an encounter with the domestic, but on closer look discomforts: his assemblage recontextualizes a hospital bed’s steel railing into a discursive grid, rendered banal—but not passive—on the gallery floor. In a beguilingly diaphanous sculpture, Daniel Klaas Beckwith probes the uncanny: his silk spider web directly questions our desire to look closely, to engage with the mundane. Vladislav Markov’s velour panels, a triptych and a pair of draped fabrics, harken to archaic textiles while bearing the mark of a futuristic symbolism. Tenant of Culture frames an abstracted quilt, stitched from fragments of handbags and discarded garments, yet retains traces of their origins—literally keeping the tags on, and in plain view.

Holly Bushman

10.12.20 — 24.1.21

Clare Koury, Daniel Klaas Beckwith, Quay Quinn Wolf, Tenant of Culture, Vladislav Markov

M23

'Ashes to Lashes, Dust to Lust', Group Show at GROVE, Berlin

'Victim of Cosmetics' by Claire Barrow in a repurposed office space, London

'Digital Anomalies' by Nicolás Lamas at FORM, Wageningen

'IT'S DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN SO I STAY QUIET' by Lukas Glinkowski at Galería Fran R

'The place that can never be' by Anna Taganzeva at Plague Space, Krasnodar

'Chocolate Goblin' by Travis John Ficarra at Glasshouse, Victoria

'MILITARY POP', Group Show at Spas Setun, Moscow

TARGET GROUP SHOW, conceived by Hannes Schmidt at BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne

'DISTIRA' by Irati Inoriza at Galeria Fran Reus, Palma de Mallorca

'Underground Memorandum' by Richard Nikl at Shore, Vienna

'All Watched Over by Emissaries of Loving Grace' by Louis Morlæ at Duarte Sequeir

'itsanosofadog *It’s an arse of a dog' by Amanda Moström, Rose Easton, London

'Deceiving players' by Rimma Arslanov at KOENIG2 by_robbygreif, Vienna

'Sizzling Hot' by Rosa Lüders at 14a, Hamburg

'The Particular Matter of a Pisces Rug' by Kelly Kaczynski at Weatherproof, Chica

'L’oracolo' by Michele Cesaratto at MURKA, Florence

'The Tiler' by Trevor Bourke at Afternoon Projects, Vancouver

'Whaleboat' by Zukhra Salakhova at Daipyat gallery, Voronezh

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