SPY Projects Presents Unrequited Group Show: An Eternally Recontextualized Assemblage of Works @ the Former Brooke Alexander Gallery in New York

Pietro Alexander’s SPY Projects, a Los Angeles-based gallery that has developed a reputation for recognizing young, emerging talent both local and international since its inception in 2021 hosts their Unrequited group show at 59 Wooster Street. Not just another SoHo loft, the building—the very floor, in fact, once housed the Brooke Alexander Gallery, which opened its first exhibition in the space nearly forty years ago and worked with a number of artists who have gone on to become legends, influencing the art scene in New York and beyond. It’s a natural meeting place between East and West coasts, and a fitting home for SPY Projects’ New York debut, since the eponymous gallerist Brooke Alexander’s brother was the artist Peter Alexander, a pioneering figure of the Light and Space movement in California.

As much as we should know what an artwork is—what’s placed in front of us, contained within a frame, defined by a title and tombstone—there’s always something that seems to escape, an uncontrollable excess of meaning beyond what anyone, even the artist could predict. Because ultimately, the substance of it all is continually created anew and brought into being through every encounter between the viewer and the work itself. As a result, even the most rigorous or tightly structured artwork remains porous and in flux, incorporating shifting social contexts, feelings, and personal histories.

So, if it can’t be controlled, why fight it? Curator Sara Apple encourages you to let go of the Sisyphean struggle to reconcile vision and meaning with the murky, malleable world. The exhibition is not an endpoint, the final realization of a concept, but an embarkation, an embrace of the unrequited to welcome the larger possibilities of experience. This extends from the artists—selected less because they fit an aesthetic mold or illustrate a particular idea, but out of organic connections—to the structure of the show itself, which hosts events and performances throughout its duration. By opening up the exhibition while supporting its full potential, all these disparate strands can be brought together, encouraged to develop into the unknown and unexpected, and become something more in the process.

Unrequited includes works by Peter Alexander, Malik Al Maliki, Katherine Auchterlonie, Stefan Bondell, Cristine Brache, Sasha Filimonov, Chris Lloyd, Kay Kasparhauser, Alison Peery, Raymond Pettibon, and Montana Simone. The show is on view through May 31 @ 59 Wooster Street, New York

 
 

Read Our Interview of Paris-Based Artist Ladji Diaby →

 
 

April 11th marked the opening of Preservation, a group show curated by Paige Silveria and Paul Hameline at CØR Studio in Paris. The exhibition brings together a disparate group of artists (including Ladji Diaby, Alyssa Kazew, Mark Flood, Gogo Graham, Jordan Pallagès, Anthony Fornasari, Bill Taylor, Caos Mote, Ron Baker, Cecile Di Giovanni, Simon Dupety, Gaspar Willmann, Wolfgang Laubersheimer, and the late, great Gaetano Pesce) whose work ranges from photography, collage, video, design, sculpture, and more. These works explore the original purpose of our human intellect before it became aware of itself and started to ask the unknowable. They reflect on a time when the self wasn’t yet conscious and only concerned itself with preservation in the most existential sense of the word. On the occasion of the opening, Paige Silveria spoke with artist Ladji Diaby to learn more about his roots in Mali, his creative process, and his relationship to the art scene in Paris. Read more.

amy von harington: Buyer Beware @ Rude Drawing in Los Angeles

For the first time ever, amy von harington is showing a selection of collages from her three-year project on Instagram at Rude Drawing. While the artist’s assemblage pieces are primarily constructed from vintage images, her work reflects the current zeitgeist. Blending the banal with the ordinary, von harington creates a fantasyland where dolls and hunks across America embrace their freakishness.

Buyer Beware is on view through July 7 at Rude Drawing 1676 Redesdale Avenue Los Angeles, CA. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Opening Of Nino Cais' Don't turn off the light @ Fridman Gallery In New York

Don’t turn off the light is the second solo exhibition at Fridman Gallery for Brazilian artist, Nino Cais. It presents the artist’s take on male and female forms through installation, assemblages, and film. The artist utilizes his unique syntax, juxtaposing the banal and the fetishized, to create dreamlike unions of household objects and found photography. To read our 2014 interview of the artist, click here. Don’t turn off the light opens tonight @ 6pm and is on view through November 3 at Fridman Gallery 287 Spring Street New York. images courtesy of Nino Cais and Fridman Gallery

Soul Of A Nation: Art In the Age Of Black Power Opens @ Brooklyn Museum

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power shines light on a broad spectrum of Black artistic practice from 1963 to 1983, one of the most politically, socially, and aesthetically revolutionary periods in American history. Black artists across the country worked in communities, in collectives, and individually to create a range of art responsive to the moment-including figurative and abstract painting, prints, and photography; assemblage and sculpture; and performance. The exhibition is on view from September 14 through February 3 at Brooklyn Museum 200 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn, New York

New Work By Isa Genzken @ David Zwirner Gallery In New York

David Zwirner presents an exhibition of recent and new work by German artist Isa Genzken. On view will be two and three dimensional assemblages from the past two years by the artist, who is widely recognized for her significant, pioneering contribution to contemporary sculpture. With a career spanning four decades, Genzken’s works draw upon everyday material culture, including design, consumer goods, the media, architecture, and urban environments. In addition to sculpture and installation art, her prodigious oeuvre includes paintings, collages, drawings, films, and photographs, and frequently incorporates seemingly disparate materials and imagery to create characteristically complex, enigmatic works. Drawing loosely on the legacies of Constructivism and Minimalism and often involving a critical, open dialogue with Modernist architecture, her interest lies in the way in which common aesthetic styles come to illustrate and embody contemporary political and social ideologies. The exhibition will be on view until October 31, 2015 at David Zwirner gallery, 519 West 19th Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

Carol Bove 'The Plastic Unit' @ David Zwirner London

David Zwirner presents the gallery’s first exhibition with Carol Bove. On view at our London location, it features recent works by the New York-based artist, known for her simple yet intricate assemblages of found and made objects. Carol Bove 'The Plastic Unit' will be on view at David Dwirner London until May 30, 2015. photographs by Flo Kohl