All images courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery.
In his debut solo exhibition It Ain’t Necessarily Soft at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Gil Yefman exhibits sculptural and two-dimensional installations created over the past decade. Yefman’s practice explores a unique artistic language defined by brightly colored knitted sculptures of grotesque, fluid, multi-organ beings. The knitted work becomes an extension of the body, and felting becomes a memorialization of the experiences held within that body. Though knitting and felting are commonly associated with female, queer, and domestic tasks that would traditionally fall into a strictly decorative category, Yefman redefines them into works that honor a memory within the individual to provide a sense of justice and new presence in the world. These soft objects that were once read as defense mechanisms representing a vulnerable or threatened body are transformed into a new relationship with social injustices.
It Ain’t Necessarily Soft is on view through September 15 @ Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 5247 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016
