Jesse Darling, Celia Hempton, Paul Maheke, Sejourner Truth Parsons, Dardan Zhegrova
NO ORDINARY LOVE
JESSE DARLING
« Cavalry (sugar n stone) », 2016, fondant sugar, steel, clay, 105 x 102 x 37 cm.
« Sentry », 2016, clay, fondant sugar, steel, dimensions variables.
« Saint Batman », 2016, welded steel, sugar, antivirus mask, expanding foam, 159 x 61 x 27 cm.
Born in 1981, in Oxford, United Kingdom. Lives and works in London.
Jesse Darlingâs practice is concerned with the human condition and how it is mediated through the structures, narratives and technologies that govern lived experience. Considering the social and physical body as a site where architectural, [bio] political and social structures manifest and become transformed, Jesse Darling works in sculpture, installation, text and âdasein by designâ (the space where performance and unmediated experience meet). Recent exhibitions include: âThe Shadow of the Dome of Pleasureâ, Artspace, New Zealand; âAbsolute Bearingâ, LD50 Gallery, London; âSpirit Levelâ (with Takeshi Shiomitsu), AND/OR Gallery, London; âDevotionsâ, MOT Projects, London; They/Them, DREI, Cologne (all 2015); and âArt After the Internetâ, MoMA, Warsaw (2014). Later this year, they will present a solo exhibition at Company Gallery, New York, and will also be published in the upcoming anthology Best British Poetry2015. Jesse Darling works as editor-at-large for The New Inquiry, publishes texts and essays when absolutely necessary, and is represented by Arcadia_Missa.
CELIA HEMPTON
« bulgaria 25th november 2015 », 2015, Oil on linen, 25 x 30 cm.
« Unknown (video loop) russia », 22nd october 2015, 2015, Oil on polyester, 25 x 30 cm.
Born in 1981 in Stroud, United Kingdom. Lives and works in London.
For all the flesh depicted in Celia Hemptonâs portraits, sensuality is only one part of the story. Although Hemptonâs nudes are typically titled with proper names, they are impersonal, their faces cropped out. They communicate something unknowable and ungraspable in even the frankest exposure of the body; try to clasp Kajsa (2015), and she would slip between your palms like an icicle. The subjects arenât strangers; they are Hemptonâs friends, acquaintances and, for the picture that initiated the series, her boyfriend. Initially, she wanted to paint his erection, but this required him to watch pornography while he posed â âwhich put me in an interesting positionâ, she tells me â so she eventually asked him to flip onto his front. Though the foregrounding of male buttocks carries cultural baggage, the sexual inflection of this particular presentation of the body is, in some sense, incidental. What Hempton seeks, rather, is the chance to paint from an âinteresting positionâ â in this case, the fascination, rage, hilarity or whatever it is that ensues from watching your partner turned-on by someone else. âWhat I am looking for when paintingâ, Hempton says, âis a situation more important than the painting itself.â For her series âChat Randomâ (2014âongoing), which was first shown at Southard Reid in London in 2014, the artist utilizes chatrandom.com, which connects global users via webcam â usually for the purposes of masturbation. Hempton asks random men if she can paint them, and then, brush in one hand and typing with the other, she depicts as much of the on-screen feed as the subjectâs patience â or arousal â allows. To see and be seen: this aspect of Chatrandom is compulsive, trance-like and occasionally aggressive. But then âwithout awkwardnessâ, Hempton says, the process âjust becomes about making a painting againâ. Itâs as if self-consciousness â something that even the most eager users of Chatrandom, not coincidentally, lack â is, for the artist, a luxury antithetical to creativity. Recent solo exhibitions include âThe Female Gaze, Part Two: Women Look At Menâ, Cheim & read, New York, USA (2016); âPredictionâ cur. By Milovan Farronato, Mendes Wood DM, SĂŁo Paulo; âLupaâ, Galerie Sultana Paris, France (2015); âChat Randomâ, Southard Reid, London, UK; âPaintings on Wall and Canvasâ, Galleria Lorcan OâNeill, Rome; a performance and presentation of work made in Stromboli as part of Fiorucci Art Trust's festival Forget Amnesia (2014); âCurâ, Southard Reid, London, UK and Vug, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2013). Selected forthcoming and recent group exhibitions include âThe Painting Showâ, British Council Touring Exhibition; âElectronic Superhighway 2016 â 1966â, Whitechapel Gallery, London; âIâm here but youâve goneâ, Fiorucci Art Trust, London; âTomorrow: Londonâ, South London Gallery, London; âBurning Down The Houseâ, Gwangju Biennale and Abstract Cabinet, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, (2013).
PAUL MAHEKE
« To Read the Wavering of the Swarm », 2016,impression numérique sur tissu, dimensions variables.
to read the wavering of the swarm as a resilient flicker, a gesture towards transformation
(lire le flottement de l'essaim comme un scintillement extensible, un geste vers la transformation)
Born in 1985, Brive-la-Gaillarde, France. Lives and works in London.
Maheke has recently completed a programme of study at Open School East, after receiving an MA in Art Practice at lâĂcole Nationale SupĂ©rieure dâArts de Paris-Cergy (FR) in 2011. His practice is grounded in emancipatory and decolonial thought with an emphasis on cultural identities and new subjectivities. His current research focuses â through video, installation, sculpture and furtive interventions â on the body as both an archive and a territory, as a utopia to be reimagined through different strategies of resistance. With particular attention to dance, he proposes to defuse the power relations that shape Western imaginations and to rearticulate the representations that emerge from them. Over the past year Maheke has pursued his research initiating a series of public conversations, at Open School East, entitled âBeyond BeyoncĂ©: Use It Like a Bumper!â, which considered Hip-Hop cultures through the lens of Queer and Black Feminist theory. Recent solo shows: âGreen Ray Turns Out To Be Mauveâ, Green Ray, London (March 2016) and a performance at Guest Projects, London (April 2016). Other selected group exhibitions and residencies include âRupturesâ, ABI, cur. Katy Orkisz, London (2015); artist-in-residence at Darling Foundry, Montreal, Canada (2015); âODRADEKâ, Les Instants ChavirĂ©s, cur. Mikaela Assolent + Flora Katz, Montreuil, France (2015); âRe-former le monde visibleâ, Le 116, cur. MarlĂšne Rigler, Montreuil, France (2014); 59th Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge, France (2014); artist-in-residence at CIAP - Ăle de VassiviĂšre, France (2014); âVideoaktâ, French Institute, Barcelona, Spain (2013); âVIVA!â, at Centre CLARK, Montreal, Canada (2012); âPratiques Furtives : fragments dâune enquĂȘteâ, cur. Patrice Loubier, Skol art center, Montreal, Canada (2012). Upcoming: âTake the Weightâ, SixtyEight Art Institute, cur. Tom Clark + Iben Elmstrom, Copenhagen, Denmark (2017, group show).
SOJOURNER TRUTH PARSONS
« The same rope that pulls you up will hang you his and hers edition II », 2016, collaged canvas, acrylic, sand and glitter, 180 x 130 cm.
Born in 1984 in Vancouver, Canada. Lives and works in Toronto.
Sejourner Truth Parsons received her BFA from The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Parsons, a Toronto-based artist (who shares her first two names with a fantastic 19th century African-American freedom fighter) has an indulgent, slacker-ish rebelliousness to the way she works. Her paintings look like they were made by that smart girl who gets itâone who knows that painting has had its mid-century heyday, has died, and has been born again with a market friendly vigorâbut is making the choice to not care. Parsonsâ lack of seriousness would be annoying if it felt like she were angling towards somethingâsay, if she, like Helen Johnson, paired her casualness with just enough control to look post-Internet cool. And some work, like the âUntitled videoâ, leaning in the corner, or the slightly flatter paintings with long fingers holding cigarettes, do read as too self-consciously composed. But the best work seems driven by a desire for juicy, funny, infectious impudence. Paintings like the first fruit to fall, an awkwardly off-kilter composition of falling red fruit against pink protruding bricks, grab you for the heck of it.In 2014, she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Residency grant to attend Santa Fe Art Institute. She has exhibited at Phil Gallery, Los Angeles; Night Gallery, San Francisco; and Mulherin, Asya Geisberg, New York, USA; Jessica Bradley Gallery, Cooper Cole, Toronto; and Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Canada. Parsons currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
DARDAN ZHEGROVA
« Your enthusiasm to tell a story (White) », 2016, Mixed media and sound, Dimensions vairiables.
Born in 1991 in Prishtina, Kosovo. Lives and works in Prishtina.
Dardan Zhegrovaâs works play with the flux between language and its translation into visual representation. In his works emotion is used as an artistic medium that potentially could act as a means to questions our assumptions about intimacy and expression. Mostly known for his videos the artist can be regarded as a poet in a time where physical proximity is being replaced by an ubiquitous availability through modern means of communication. Recent exhibitions and performances include: âWhere we meet sometimes at night, bright bright, long talk in whiteâ, LambdaLambdaLambda, Prishtina; âYour Enthusiasm to tell a storyâ, Gallery 12Hub, Belgrade.