Some people believe earnestness and intellectualism are mutually exclusive. Some people have become consumed with brands and trends. I am not one of these people.
Every once in a while, you meet someone or experience something that alters your present perspective, that fucks with your future understanding, that urges you to retrace the steps you have taken to get where you’re currently standing. These moments are special, they are often unexpected and unpredictable, they can take many shapes and forms. Sometimes it’s an armageddon breakup; sometimes it’s a soothing extended mantra, mouthed monotonously for three minutes or so; sometimes it’s a seemingly straightforward exchange or intervention; sometimes it’s a daring declaration, couched within the contextual confines of late-stage capitalism; sometimes it’s simply the acceptance of existence itself.
It’s okay to be an idealist, it’s okay to be a freak. So many artists have forgotten how to be themselves. The five I have asked to participate in this exhibition have each created a life’s work that can be studied, that can be admired, that can be seen as a blueprint for how not to conform to the societal pressures of contemporary life.
Today, we live in a world that wants us to suffer. We live in countries that want us to waste. But I live for a place that longs for us to be.
—Keith J. Varadi, July 2026
Beatrix Fowler (b. 1978, Berkeley, California) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002. Fowler, a free-jazz percussionist, first rose to prominence in the 2000s for her diaristic and rhythmic, mostly solo musical/performance art project, BARR, which contained self-deprecating and self-reflexive lyrics about daily life, her relationships (romantic or otherwise), and the weight of social structures on the average person. Her visual work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; the New Museum, New York, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California; The Kitchen, New York, New York; the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado; the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Hague, the Netherlands; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Paris, France; Higher Pictures, New York, New York; and PPOW Gallery, New York, New York.
Kim Gordon (b. 1953, Los Angeles, California) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received a BFA from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1977 and moved to New York City three years later, where she co-founded and sang and played bass and guitar in Sonic Youth, one of the most seminal indie rock bands in music history. Her solo music has been universally lauded, earning her two Grammy nominations in 2025. Over the years, her work has spanned art, design, fashion, film, music, and writing. It has been exhibited at the Busan Biennale at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, South Korea; the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin, Ireland; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Manifesta 11, Zürich, Switzerland; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; MoMA PS1, Queens, New York; White Columns, New York, New York; Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York, New York; 303, New York, New York; Gagosian, Los Angeles, California; Amant, Brooklyn, New York; and O-Town House, Los Angeles, California.
Mauricio Guillén (b. 1971, Mexico City, Mexico) lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico. He received his BFA from the Parsons School of Design at the New School in 1995 and his MA from the Royal College of Art in 2003. He has worked with fashion magazines, including Purple Prose, Dazed & Confused, and i-D. His work is in the collections of the Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria; the Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
Chris Kraus (b. 1955, The Bronx, New York) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received a bachelor’s degree from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is a writer, critic, editor, filmmaker, and professor. She has published five novels, a biography, and three collections of art and cultural criticism. Additionally, she has made nine films and six plays and curated and produced Chance: Three Days in the Desert, a “philosophical rave and summit meeting between artists and philosophers, chaosophists and croupiers, mathematicians and musicians” at Whiskey Pete’s Casino in Primm, Nevada on the border of California in 1996. Her work has come to be known for its shrewd ability to blend high and low culture, critical theory and raw personal experiences, and investigative explorations and spontaneous riffing. It is simultaneously both rigorous and intuitive and equally humorous and intellectual.
Since 1990, she has been the co-editor of the highly influential independent press, Semiotext(e).
Jonas Mekas (b. 1922, Semeniškiai, Lithuania; d. 2019, Brooklyn, New York) was an artist, poet, and filmmaker who arrived in Brooklyn, New York as a refugee in 1949 and bought his first Bolex camera shortly thereafter. In 1954, he and his brother co-founded the magazine, Film Culture. He became the Village Voice’s first film critic in 1958. In 1961, he co-founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, along with Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, and others. He established Anthology Film Archives in 1970. His work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris France; Serpentine Gallery, London, England; the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; the University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City, Mexico; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; MoMA PS1, Queens, New York; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C.; Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania.
