Randolpho Lamonier Presents My Kind Of Dirty @ Fort Gansevoort

 
 

My Kind Of Dirty is Brazilian artist Randolpho Lamonier’s first exhibition with Fort Gansevoort. This online presentation brings together recent textile works in which Lamonier responds to his upbringing in Contagem, an industrial city in southeastern Brazil, drawing  upon observations of hardship and inequality to create powerful expressions in vivid colors, word  combinations, and raw images. The artist locates his inspiration in an environment where joy grows  proportionally to misfortune and likens his work to diaristic entries. Rendered in deceptively humble handwork and fabrics, the scintillating psychedelic landscapes on view in My Kind Of Dirty celebrate “the  exuberance of life that resists against the necropolitical agenda guided by the current Brazilian government,” the artist has said. In this way, Lamonier’s approach to representation acts as personal revolution, whereby the aura of possibility defines his blueprint for the future. 

My Kind Of Dirty is available for online viewing through May 15

Hybrid Forms: Read Our Interview Of Artist & Storyteller Christopher Myers →

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

How does a country like Vietnam, absent of a black community, develop a rich brass band tradition with roots in the American South? How did the British flag inspire a Ghanaian tradition in textiles that is steeped in magical superstition? What do Aimé Césaire, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Emma Goldman all have in common? To find the answers to any of these questions you’d have to ask none other than the multi-disciplinary, head honcho of hybridity, artist Christopher Myers. His practice is as much about connecting the mythologies of ancient Egypt and Greece with those of Judeo-Christian scripture, as it is about connecting the migrations of syncratic practices across the globe and throughout history. His most recent solo exhibition, Drapetomania, at Fort Gansevoort in Los Angeles primarily features hand-sewn flags depicting a wide array of syncratic allegories that in many ways define the globalized, contemporary psyche. Click here to read more.

Zoe Buckman: Heavy Rag @ Fort Gansevoort In New York

Zoe Buckman’s solo show is explicitly linked to women’s work. Culled from deeply personal experience, the exhibition embraces the domestic archetype by balancing an ambiguity between vulnerability and strength. Occupying the three floors of the gallery, the bodies of work are interconnected by the manifestation of the artist’s relationship to physical spaces—the home, her mother’s kitchen table, the boxing gym. After learning of her mother’s terminal diagnosis, Buckman began to employ a variety of techniques and materials traditionally adorned by women; embroidered tea towels, quilting and pottery. The works which take form as misshapen tea cups, clusters of boxing gloves, and framed flatworks are intrinsically referential to the bodily form; all at once unveiling a complex dichotomy of trauma and pleasure and the slippage in between. Heavy Rag is on view through October 12 at Fort Gansevoort 5 Ninth Avenue, New York. photographs courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort, New York

Patrick Martinez Presents That Which We Do Not See @ Fort Gansevoort In New York

Through formally painted portraits, Patrick Martinez sheds light on past and current civil rights leaders who would historically be left in the shadows. These portraits are found atop realistically depicted three-dimensional cakes, embodying the celebratory tone that Martinez wishes to portray. Through a study of the lack of diverse representation in historical portrait painting, a medium traditionally used to celebrate ones successes and wealth, Martinez was led to the portrait cake paintings. The cake acts as a globally and socio-economically understood medium of celebration, now featuring the faces of not only white historical figures but the faces of freedom fighters of all races. This series was first inspired by a video of Tupac’s last birthday, which included a cake frosted with his portrait that did not resemble him in the slightest. The cake paintings feature the likes of Angela Davis, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X, and include even lesser known freedom fighters such as Larry Itliong of the Philippines paying respect to Martinez’s mother’s birthplace. Martinez also works with the insignias of civil rights activist groups, such as the Black Panther Party in his piece titled Chocolate Cake for the Black Panther Party. That Which We Do Not See will be on view through April 20 at Fort Gansevoort 5 Ninth Avenue, New York. photographs courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort, New York.