The Only Way Down at A.D.

Artists: Oscar Bedford, Margaux Dewarrat, Chris Zacher

Exhibition title: The Only Way Down

Venue: A.D., New York, US

Date: June 28 – August 3, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and A.D., New York

“Ascending” cannot exist without “descending”. The two actions fluctuate and vibrate rapidly back and forth over any span of time. Minor gains are countered by equally minor losses and a tedious balance persists, impeding growth and orientation.

Through emotional forfeiture the pendulum swings towards descent and the path downward is set. In the depths dwell a sparse set of characters which exist in states of misadventure and melodrama.

A black cat crumples on the floor in a crescent shape, exhausted to the anthem of “no more drama”. The cat’s glazed-over expression stares at no one and nothing in particular. The cats flatness is punctuated by it’s unusually long tail, which spirals upwards, aspiring to heights the rest of its body will never ascend to.

A ping-pong table cobbled together with debris and assembled with the utmost care and optimism seems unlikely to support the weight of the ball meant to bounce off its imperfect surface. The hobbyist table stands as a reflection of the stilted memory that spawned it or perhaps as a parable for flat-earthers and the impossibility of roundness.

Shins adorned in jeans and sneakers stick shyly out of a brown paper bag at the base of the stairs. Like a disappearing gag gone wrong or the remnants of an unforeseen violence, the partial figure is left with no other option but to stay put (if I carry my legs how will i walk?).

These figures exist in the wake of minor tragedy, left to make heads or tails of their shared circumstance. As their whimsy wains, the weight of their predicament is amplified by the knowledge that the path they took down is not the way back up.

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Oscar Bedford lives and works between Providence, RI and Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited at Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Hood Gallery in NYC, the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, MA, and the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. He has mounted site-specific public artworks at Amherst College, MA and will be installing another on Wheaton College campus in Massachusetts later this summer.

Margaux Dewarrat lives and works in Switzerland. Recent exhibitions include La Printanière, Avenue d’Ouchy 515e Plateforme. Wunderkammer and Warum warum ist die katze krumm? with Kaspar Müller, Alienze, Lausanne

Chris Zacher lives and works in Hanson, Massachusetts. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Step Sister, New York, NY, Syracuse University Art Gallery, Ice Collective, Shoppingtown Mall, Dewitt, NY, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, and Mobius, Boston, MA.