The Atavistic Homeschooling of Espalier at Below Grand

Artists: Sam Cockrell, Cameron Cameron, Poppy DeltaDawn, Brett DePalma, Joseph Dolinsky, Sasha Fishman, Colleen Marie Foley, Paul Sebastian Japaz, Cima Rahmankhah, Kent Rhodebeck, Jeenho Seo, Peat Szilagyi

Exhibition title: The Atavistic Homeschooling of Espalier

Venue: Below Grand, New York, US

Date: September 3 – October 8, 2022

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

All of your siblings are off to college. Distanced from them by enough years, the silhouette of their experience is unfamiliar. The things they have learned become misaligned, don’t fit right, by the time they get to you.

You find yourself rejecting the things you loved when they were here. All of it– the bands, the movies, your hobbies, anything they may have known you for you now reject. You’ve promised yourself to change as much as they have, to be as strange to them as they are hoping to be to you when they come back on break.

Homeschooled, you’ve always been both the cool kid and the poser in your class of one. You are your own counterculture– a recursive but energetic discourse of your own. No one has ever told you that Whitney Houston, Thrasher, and Fassbinder films are incommensurate interests. Left alone, you might start drawing pictures of the devil on the cross while listening to Dolly Parton. You’re always looking for a third way, a way to drop out; something that keeps the tension between all of the different sides and makes each side feel unsettled.

Looking out the window, you watch the hedge between your house and the neighbors grow taller. The wild shapes and forms of the espalier are mimetic to weird animals, ancient shapes, Solomonic symbols– a growing, luxurious tathata. The spaces in the trellis form flourishing lacunae between your yard and the outside world. Your eyes keep moving to the ground as you feel yourself drawn to the rhythmic cycles of nature over the false arrow of your older siblings; preferring its vertical wilderness to their horizontal progress. It’s both a memory and something you can lean on. It needs pruning, but you let it grow abstract.

The Atavistic Homeschooling of Espalier, 2022, exhibition view, Below Grand, New York

Brett DePalma, Monkey Business, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, 2020

Cima Rahmankhah, Through the Slit, Oil on canvas, 9 x 12 in, 2022

Brett DePalma, Monkey Man, Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, 2020

Joseph Dolinsky, Left: Vampire Voltage,Plaster and dyes, 11 x 10 x 5 in, 2019. Right: Gray Alter,Plaster, dyes and copper rod, 17 x 7 x 5 in, 2020

Joseph Dolinsky, Left: Portrait of Ryan, Plaster, cement, foam, copper tube and wire, 14 x 8 x 2,5 in, 2018, Right: Miles of Tiles, Plaster, dyes steel plate, silicone and copper wire, 8 x 9 x 4,5 in, 2019

Joseph Dolinsky, Left: Vampire Voltage,Plaster and dyes, 11 x 10 x 5 in, 2019. Right: Gray Alter,Plaster, dyes and copper rod, 17 x 7 x 5 in, 2020

The Atavistic Homeschooling of Espalier, 2022, exhibition view, Below Grand, New York

Cameron Cameron, Report, State, Resin, foam, image transfer, ceramic, Images collected from Biodiversity Heritage Library at the University of Edinburgh, 24 x 24 x 13 inches, 2022

The Atavistic Homeschooling of Espalier, 2022, exhibition view, Below Grand, New York

Colleen Marie Foley/ My Weary Magnet Stirs Still, Video Installation, Approx 14 x 18 inches, 2021

Sam Cockrell, Pale Beauty, Acrylic on canvas, 4 x 5 ft, 2022

Poppy Delta Dawn, Stacks, Wool, cotton, tinsel on linen, 27 x 18,5 in, 2022

Sasha Fishman, There She is, Resin, acetate, bismuth cuttlefish casts, electroformed copper, sand, copper mesh, nickel, solder, 24 x 5 x 4 inches, 2022