Artist: Borden Capalino
Exhibition title: Swamp Etiquette
Venue: Lyles & King, New York, US
Date: March 24 – April 22, 2018
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Lyles & King
Lyles & King is pleased to present Swamp Etiquette, a solo exhibition of new work by Borden Capalino.
Capalino prints found 35mm film, stock photos, and cell phone pics onto painted polystyrene mounted on board. Some images qualify as what Hito Steryl has dubbed the “poor image,” a digital picture of low resolution and dubious provenance – cut, pasted, and severed from its history. Others, the stock photos, are pristine, enlargeable, and for sale, but similarly deracinated and eager to fulfill the viewer’s expectations and projections. The piles of blond hair, the face of a smiling policeman, a cornucopia of rotting fruit, invite associations and projections.
Capalino then slices and intermixes the images, defaces them with poured acetone (which melts the polystyrene), and coats them in swathes of glistening silicone resin. Each move of material damage he counters with aesthetic seduction. The surfaces become topographies of craters, pools of silicone, and mounds of earth. The transformation of the photographic images into primordial landscape is further emphasized by the application of cow hooves, sea shells, soil, freeze dried shell fish, rice, and insertion of wall vents. The idea of augury, or divination, says that meaning or the future can be read in the entrails of sacrificed animals or in the patterns of tea leaves. Likewise Capalino is interested in what the things around us portend. His process of assemblage invites a narrative reading, but results in a series of suggestive dead ends. If Capalino’s works augur anything, it is growth amidst toxicity, and vitality in wreckage.
Borden Capalino (b. 1980, New York, US) received his M.F.A from Hunter College in New York and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions include Concierge, Ramiken Crucible, New York; Roses and Dreams, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, and SOUR, galeriepcp, Paris. Group exhibitions include Office Baroque, Brussels; Maccarone, New York; Eli Ping Frances Perkins, New York; and Kate Werble, New York among others. Capalino is represented by Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin. This is his first solo exhibition with Lyles & King.
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Swamp Etiquette, 2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York
Borden Capalino, Eric the Trojan (Tarantula), 2018, UV print, air vent, beef hoof, clothing hook, soil, grass seed, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra 77 x 47 x 5.25 inches
Borden Capalino, Red Wine and Dine, 2018, UV print, air vent, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra 77 x 47 x 4 inches
Borden Capalino, Radio Chatter, 2018, UV print, air vents, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra 77 x 47 x 5.5 inches
Borden Capalino, Color Me Pretty (Unicorn), 2018, UV print, horseshoe crabs, shells, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra, 77 x 47 x 6 inches
Borden Capalino, Cash Reward (Freud’s Couch), 2018, UV print, air vent, beef hooves, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra, 77 x 47 x 5.5 inches
Borden Capalino, Opera Nite, 2018, UV print, air vent, numbered door markers, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra, 77 x 47 x 4.5 inches
Borden Capalino, Good Genes, 2018, UV print, air vents, numbered door markers, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra, 77 x 47 x 4 inches
Borden Capalino, Shamrock Green, 2018, UV print, beef hooves, soil, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra, 77 x 47 x 5.5 inches
Borden Capalino, Here and There, 2018, UV print, air vents, horseshoe crabs, bird seed, numbered door markers, plastic clothing hooks, acrylic polymer, enamel, silicone, and resin on polystyrene, wood, and Sintra, 77 x 47 x 5.75 inches
