the rehearsal (2023) ︎ ︎︎︎︎ ︎
replica
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 15 x 18 inches. January 2023
rebodying
Oil and acrylic on panel, 20 x 20 inches. January 2023
duet
Oil on panel, 8 x 8 inches each. January 2023
glitch
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 64 x 68 inches. February 2023
matrix
Oil and acrylic on panel, neon. Dimensions variable. February 2023
(re)orientation
Oil on panel, 8 x 10 inches each. December 2022
technotopia
Oil and acrylic on canvas, 61 x 64 inches. December 2022
the rehearsal is a system. It is a method to simulate relationships, events, and experiences. It is an expansive space that makes conceptual embodiments possible. It is a performance enacted between viewer and object. It is a grid containing color fields, the objects of the paintings, the viewer, and the gallery itself. The gaps between these positions on the grid are the affective spaces that I am exploring with this exhibition.
The grid organizes space, making objects and relationships visible. In my paintings, I use the grid to make the materiality of paint and relational qualities of color visible, exposing their affective potentials. The grid’s panoptic ability to reveal and embody abstract, imperceptible processes gives it the transformative potential to materialize experiences of gender as mutable, multiple, and expansive. Functioning as both a system that makes visible and as figurative subject is the grid’s queer capacity.
I make quiet paintings that allow space for slow looking. Through aesthetic labor we relearn how to see and identify what we are looking at – unlearning the instantaneous act of assigning meaning to what is seen. This invites figurative readings of these paintings. The grids are awkward, imperfect, and porous. They are bodies. My paintings, then, become stand-ins for the body and vessels for rebodying: the process of growing new boundaries and conceptions of the body. Moving through space and seeing differently, with each new relation and experience we are rebodied. Archiving and facilitating these expansive, mutable, and mediated embodiments is the grid’s transgender potential.
This exhibition transforms the space of the gallery into a grid, organizing viewer and object in its panoptic system. My paintings are gates to enter this system and look around. They are invitations to rebody. As we move in relation to the works, we expand the grid beyond the picture plane, revealing the affective relationships between viewer and object. The gaps between the positions on the grid are sites of tension between mutability and stasis, self and object. We learn to see ourselves differently and be ourselves differently. This is the grid’s affective power.
This exhibition is part of a process, a segment of the grid, a system. It is not an end in itself. It is a transitional phase, a living and fluid process. A space to see gender and the body as mutable, relational, and expansive. A space of potential beings and becomings. If it doesn’t work out this time, that is okay. It is only a rehearsal.
installation views:
