my fossil, my echo / my excess, my scrap at MX Gallery

Artists: Cristine Brache, Isabel Legate, Carmen Neely, Kayode Ojo, Patrice Renee Washington

Exhibition title: my fossil, my echo / my excess, my scrap

Curated by: Gabrielle Jensen and Julia Lee

Venue: Mx Gallery, New York, US

Date: June 20 – August 10, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Mx Gallery, New York

Fossilization anxiety is the state of dread that arises when the signifiers that mark a body fix or prefigure a subject’s becoming, regardless of these signs being confessed or imposed, interior or exterior. A subject clotted, the fossilized object often serves as a relic of this anxiety, only to be kept in vitrines, set upon plinths, locked in cages or language, as matter known or knowable. However, the fossil may also masquerade as an actionable thing— an invitation, perhaps, to hang your pants, eat your fill, or wipe your feet. Here, the fossil mimes the very rituals that set its mold, performing a past towards a coveted result.

The echo is an interruption of presence— the speaker becomes multiplied, fragmented, dissipating. An echo does not obey its origin: it finds itself still out at sunrise, in a stranger’s soiled clothes. An echo can disguise: it dutifully watches online beauty tutorials, taking pleasure in seeking chameleon. Repetition disturbs devotion to the conflation of presentation with possession. Confronted by its own voice in boomerang, the choir slides out of pitch, while prolonged self-encounter in the mirror is a primary cause of dissociation. When recited into pools of water, names abandon their owners.

Excess is an ecstatic surrender to unknowing; a state of being in free fall, beyond corporeal edges. Picture the body’s sinews as billowing ribbons, or nodes of sex as mother of pearl, found suspended in an ocean. That excess can be a resilient enunciation, approaching desire through the exploitation of its forms (endlessness; endlessly so). And another one, and another one, and another one… Excess disturbs what is known as inside and outside, and engenders a contented invisibility in being again and again. Through proliferation, the excessive body seeps over its taxonomies. The eventual hope is to smother them.

The survivor of mutilated material, the scrap refuses to perform a whole. Once cut from and perpetually playing its hand against a given set of potential becomings, the scrap must stretch itself into the theatrics of over-representation. Strewing the runway with tinsel, scratching the canvas in frenetic, roiling gestures, the scrap asserts its presence as if it were inevitable: always, already. And yet, the scrap left a nothingness somewhere. A carpet remnant (and the negative space that held it), a remainder (and its twin gap), insert themselves against the insistent demand to desire and present as whole, a colonizing seduction. Here, hijacking imposed codes and systems of display, the scrap, a double, though now uncoupled, is precious in its discarded state.

Isabel Legate, My Eyelashes Ribbling (melon flavored), 2017, glass, silk, candy, mirror, dimensions variable

Cristine Brache, Solitaire, 2017, red abalone, porcelain, mahogany, glass, water, lipstick, carpet, dimensions variable

Carmen Neely, Keep It 100, 2016, vinyl, pillow, polymer clay, safety pins, silicone, glue, staples, paper, duct tape, ear plugs, red wine, felt , beads, model magic, yarn, fiberfill, wood, cardboard, acylic, oil on canvas, 84 x 72 in

Patrice Renee Washington, Kleiner Bergsteiger, 2012, Handmade latch hook rug, 144 x 72 in

Cristine Brache, No dice, 2017, porcelain, dog cage, wee-wee pad, dimensions variable

Kayode Ojo, Untitled (from Trigger, 2014), 2017, Dazzling Silver Womens Flapper Costume Size Large, Hamilton Stands KB400 Classic American Folding Sheet Music Stand (Chrome), Clear Amac Boxes, mirror, glass, dimensions variable

Kayode Ojo, Untitled, 2017, Uniqlo Men’s Leggings Jeans Gray, Rit Liquid Fabric Dye Black, Hamilton Stands KB400 Classic American Folding Sheet Music Stand (Chrome), Jane Stone Hot Sexy Simple Unibody Bilayer Silver Color Tassels Body Chain Necklace Fashion Statement Jewelry New Body Necklace(Fn1095-Silver), Clear Amac Boxes, mirror, glass, dimensions variable

Kayode Ojo, Untitled, 2016, Vintage dress lining, Jane Stone Hot Sexy Simple Unibody Bilayer Silver Color Tassels Body Chain Necklace Fashion Statement Jewelry New Body Necklace (Fn1095 Silver), Hamilton Stands KB400 Classic American Folding Sheet Music Stand (Chrome), Clear Amac Boxes, mirror, glass, dimensions variable