A Small Land of Watery Light at Gallery Vacancy

Artists: Whitney Claflin, Vivian Greven, Sam Lipp, Victoria Palacios, Martyna Pinkowska, Paul Robas, Tung Wing Hong, Jesse Wine

Exhibition title: A Small Land of Watery Light

Venue: Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, China

Date: March 30 – May 4, 2024

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Gallery Vacancy

Gallery Vacancy is pleased to announce the group exhibition A Small Land of Watery Light, on view from March 30 to May 4, 2024, featuring artists Whitney Claflin (b. 1983), Vivian Greven (b. 1985), Sam Lipp (b. 1989), Victoria Palacios (b. 1992), Martyna Pinkowska (b. 1997), Paul Robas (b. 1989), Tung Wing Hong (b. 1989), and Jesse Wine (b. 1983). The selection of works will explore themes surrounding the body, and its manifold archive of memories shaped by experiences and environments, by inequalities and resistance, that is belonging to our time.

Some artists tap into themes of gender identity and inherent memories, appealing to subvert narratives of social and personal identity symptomatic of their geopolitical and psychological contexts. Others defy formal conventions in art history by employing a fresh take on traditional techniques, found materials and intuition in their practice. These paintings, video installations and sculptures come together as mental bodies materialized from one’s perception, concept and contemplation. Sentient. Mortal. Exposed. These anthropomorphic manifestations honor the power of the creative spark and allow us to see the shape of that diversity.

Whitney Claflin makes the relation between painting and body feel pliable, by composing her body-oriented abstractions not only of traditional paint, but of beauty products, fashion garments and accessories. This cheekily bizarre confluence of female signifiers parallels the kind of personal metamorphosis promised by cosmetics companies and the prescribed self-definition of modern woman under Consumerism.

Vivian Greven’s painting integrates the ubiquity of artistic nude with a contemporary twist through an overdesirous portrayal of the erotic body. Through this reversal of power dynamics inherent to the traditional male gaze, where a woman’s body was only presented as an artistic subject, Greven demonstrates the potential of nudity to disturb and unsettle, and re-stakes her artistic claim.

Sam Lipp’s work focuses on the depiction of bodies as a way of delineating identity as a subset of subjectivity and an instrument to rework social, culture and political power structures. The measurements of Use (2019–2020), which are identical to those of a yard sign, amplify the similarities between his painting and signage–a duality of concept and material, both discrete in their intention as willing subjects of objectification.

Victoria Palacios’ theatrical portrayal of costumed figures––acrobats, harlequins, and clowns––intertwines personal familiarity with her own imaginative identification. In many of her works, these clownish characters appear brilliant, scintillating, entertaining us in their gaiety, naivety and sorrow. As unusual beings excluded from normal life, Palacios detects the resemblance between the entertainer and the artist, in isolation and loneliness as the other.

Martyna Pinkowska’s autobiographical portraits, which often combine observational drawing and her imagination, are a metaphorical reflection to self-possession, femininity and her own experiential relationship with her body––a duality of intimacy and isolation.

Paul Robas’ works are a juxtaposition of nocturnal scenes out of his daily life and painterly portrayal of the human expression, both depicted in a sharp and fuzzy, figurative and abstract way. Merging photographic archives he collected in the past, Robas’ canvas marries stilled moments from photographs with painted compositions to invite the essence of moments and emotional resonance in a reverent way.

Tung Wing Hong maintains an interest in the embodiment of human presence onto machines and a belief that technology can liberate the corporeal body from the messiness of our present-day condition. His kinetic sculpture, No Place for Useless Men (2019) uses simple mechanics and repetition of movements to aggregate the impotence in one’s attempts to create meaning, offering a Sisyphean commentary on these meaningless actions that drain or exhaust the way we live and work.

Finally, Jesse Wine creates anthropomorphised sculptures that contemplate the etherealness and corporealness of the body amidst the digital age’s shift toward ‘non-body’ cyber identities. As seen in, Real flowers that last for a year (2023) the bodiless garment sculpture elicits the frame of the body it covers, as if inflating itself with a breath of air, giving shape to the thought of a presence through its absence.