Live, Laugh, Love at Below Grand

Artists: William Downs, Sasha Fishman, Fox Hysen, Andy Ralph, Hannah Rowan, Tsai-Ling Tseng

Exhibition title: Live, Laugh, Love

Curated by: Andrew Woolbright

Venue: Below Grand, New York, US

Date: February 26 – March 26, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Below Grand, New York

“We Must practice ‘riding on the dynamic of disaster’.”- Franco Bifo Berardi, The Third Unconscious

“Surf the Doom” – A t-shirt seen in Las Vegas

“At the end of the pandemic, at the end of the long period of isolation, people may simply continue to sink into the eternal nothingness of virtual connection, of distancing and techno-totalitarian integration. This is probable. But we should not be confined to the probable. We should discover the possibility that is hidden in the present.

After months of constant online connectivity, people might come out of their houses and apartments looking for conjunctions. A movement of solidarity and tenderness can arise, leading people towards an emancipation from connective dictatorship. We have to imagine and to create this movement of caressing, a reinvention of eros in the age of mandatory distancing.

Death is back at the centre of the landscape: that long-denied mortality, which makes humans alive.” – Franco Bifo Berardi, The Third Unconscious

Sasha Fishman (b. 1995, Baltimore, MD) is a sculptor and researcher based in Los Angeles. Working with materials such as hagfish slime, algae, and cicada shells, Sasha’s work investigates marine biomaterial extraction, toxicology and genetic engineering as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting.

Sasha received a BFA in Studio Art at The University of Texas at Austin and has exhibited her work at RESORT (Baltimore, MD), the Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX), Monte Vista Projects (Los Angeles, CA) and has been a research fellow at Caltech (Pasadena, CA). She has presented her work, run workshops and given talks at Genspace, UCLA, UDenver, Caltech and CSULB.

William Downs, born in Greenville, South Carolina, creates and resides in Atlanta, GA. He earned his multidisciplinary MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his BFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Atlanta College of Art and Design. He continues his educational practice as a visiting guest lecturer and adjunct professor.

Downs has shown in a sundry of group and solo exhibitions at venues across the United States and abroad including: E.C. Lina Gallery, LA, Contemporary Art Museum, MS, and the Century Gallery in London. In 2018, he received the Artadia Award and a Nellie Mae Rowe Fellowship at the Hambidge Creative Residency Center Program. Downs’ work featured in the Art AIDS America exhibition which toured nationally for a year headed by Rock Hushka and Johnathan Katz. Following, his work was chosen for the prolific Black Pulp! exhibition piloted by the International Print Center New York. This exhibit also showed at The Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida and the African American Museum in Philadelphia.

Downs’ work is included in numerous permanent collections including the Peggy Cooper Cafritz Collection, Portman Collection, Schrager Collection and both the Birmingham Museum of Art & the High Museum of Art. He’s featured in various publications such as Black Pulp, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, and Grizzly Grizzly’s 10 Years – 10 Essays – 10 Exhibits.

Fox Hysen is a painter born in San Rafael, CA. She currently lives in Norfolk, CT where she also runs an artist residency called Greenwoods, 2058. Solo exhibitions include Soloway Gallery in Brooklyn, Gallery 16 in San Francisco, Lehtinen Galerie in Berlin, The Suburban in Milwaukee Wisconsin and Marcello Marvelli Gallery in New York. Hysen has been part of numerous group shows including, among others, Capital and et al. in San Francisco, Basilica Hudson, New York, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Silberkuppe, Basso, all in Berlin. She was the recipient of the 2016 Tournesol award for painting by the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, and is the 2022 Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist for 2022. She has an upcoming solo show at Below Grand Gallery in NYC and is currently represented by the gallery. Fox Hysen’s upcoming book Painting/Dirt is a collection of four lectures given at the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Art at MICA in 2021.

Hannah Rowan (b. 1990 Brighton, UK ) is a multidisciplinary artist based between London and New York. She received her BFA from Central Saint Martins (London) and her MA in Sculpture from The Royal College of Art (London). Solo presentations of her work include Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva (2021); Belo Campo, Lisbon (2020); Assembly Point, London (2019); White Crypt, London (2018). She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at The Arctic Circle, The Banff Center, The Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, Scottish Sculpture Workshop and Taipei Artist Village.

Andy Ralph (b. 1982, Lake Arrowhead, CA) currently lives and works in New York City. Andy’s work has been included in exhibitions presented by New Release Gallery, Sculpture Center, International Waters, Safe Gallery, Mothership BnB, Flux Factory, P.A.D. Gallery and Regina Rex — all in New York, as well as L&M Arts and Hyperspace Lexicon in Los Angeles, the Orange County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, and the 2nd Baitball in Polignano a Mare, Italy. He was awarded artist residencies and fellowships at Ox-Bow School of Art in Michigan, the Teton Art Lab in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Famous Chimps in Ridgewood, New York. He completed his M.F.A. at Hunter College, New York, in 2019 and presented his second solo exhibition at New Release Gallery just before the C19 quarantine. Andy has a forthcoming solo presentation of new sculptures with Final Hot Desert’s off-site project that will premier in early 2022.

Tsai-Ling Tseng (b. 1991 Taipei, Taiwan) earned her MFA from the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2016. She recently had her first solo exhibition at Kapp Kapp Gallery in New York in 2021. Her recent group exhibitions include Home Alone 2: Lost in Miami, curated by William Leung, Surface Area, Miami; WoP, Avant Arte x Woaw Gallery, HK; Cavem Canem, curated by Lauren Powell, Eve Leibe Gallery, London, UK; 36 Paintings, Harper’s Books, East Hampton, NY; New Directions 2019, curated by Akili Tommasino, Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY; EXPO Chicago; and ASYAAF in Seoul. She has received awards and fellowships, including an Anderson Ranch Arts Center Artists-in-Residence Award in 2022; Shandaken: Paint School Fellowship in 2020; the Mercedes Matter/Ambassador Middendorf Award in 2019. She was also awarded the Carrie Ellen Tuttle Fellowship in 2018. She works and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Live, Laugh, Love, 2022, exhibition view, Below Grand, New York

Fox Hysen, I Am a Rock, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, 2021

Live, Laugh, Love, 2022, exhibition view, Below Grand, New York

Sasha Fishman, Viscous Hell, Spirulina, paper pulp (recycled paper, corn starch, flour, PVA, joint compound), shrinky dinks of Priscilla, copper, ceramic, glass, plaster, insulation, resin, 28 x 22 x 38 inches, 2022