WORLD VIEWS
ORGANIZED BY JOHN-ELIO REITMAN
NOVEMBER 30, 2018–JANUARY 19, 2019
OPENING RECEPTION:
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 6–9 PM
You should know
that Kairos means “weather” in modern Greek.
Also, that irony is alive and well,
with its connotations of feigned ignorance.
We play a big role
as consumers and interpreters
of the cosmos micro and macro.
(By big, I just mean that
sometimes only the tips of our fingers
will fit into them).
“They” is a pronoun now preferred
by indefinite subjects,
so maybe we’re ready to accept
that god, an equal ambiguity
walks through darkness
rarely touching a thing.
Oh, actually: maybe they touch everything
as they feel their way through obscurity?
I’m in my own world and it’s yours.
After whole ecosystems were
lost and swallowed up in our bodies
you built a world within its remains
to be littered with my admiration.
– Max Guy, 2018
321 Gallery presents World Views, a group show organized by John-Elio Reitman. Reitman has included works operating in multiple discrete realities to form a non-hierarchical or horizontal cosmos. Within it, subjectivities intercross, divide and combine. We start to see where our own “world view” exists, the limits of which come in and out of focus as we bump into one another and then slip away. Shuvinai Ashoona’s Worldview (2011), for which the exhibition is named, shows a group of unique celestial bodies–Earth-like in appearance with familiar green and blue hues–seemingly effervesce from a larger body, like tellurian bubbles. What would we feel in these different climates, familiar but unique, and how do these bodies co-exist with one another and in relation to their origin?
Shuvinai Ashoona’s (b. 1961, Cape Dorset, Nunavut Territory, Canada) imaginative and evocative drawings take a personal look at complex realities of contemporary Inuit life, histories of traditional spirituality versus organized religion and the influence of North American culture on a population that has experienced a dramatic change of lifestyle and culture in a single generation. Often startlingly different from other Cape Dorset graphic expression, Ashoona’s reputation as a contemporary Canadian artist has steadily grown over the years. Ashoona’s work has appeared in Art Basel, the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012), the National Gallery of Canada (2011, 2013), the 'Oh, Canada' exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2013), and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2009. Her works are included in several prominent institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Jesse Chapman was born in Richland, Washington. He studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University. He has been showing work in New York and elsewhere since 2002, and currently lives in upstate New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Algus Greenspon Gallery, New York, NY, 2014; Jesse Chapman: Johnny Milton, McCaffrey Fine Art, New York, NY, 2011; Marianne Boesky Gallery,New York, NY, 2009; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2008. Chapman has participated in many group exhibitions across the US and Canada with recent shows held at Fortnight Institute, New York, NY, 2016; Parisian Laundry, Montréal, Quebéc, 2016; The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI, 2016; Raising Cattle, Montréal, Quebéc, 2016; Oakland University Art Gallery, Rochester, MI, 2011 and Marianne Boesky Gallery, Project Space, New York, NY, 2011.
Peggy Chiang (b. 1989, San Francisco, CA) received her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011. Recent exhibitions include The Mirror at Current Space (Baltimore, MD), Ventriloquist at Evening Hours (New York, NY) and R.I.P. at Rope (Baltimore, MD). She is based in Baltimore, MD.
Max Guy’s multi-media work takes the form of performance, sculpture and installation, clumsily giving form to existential crises, moral and ethical dilemma. He received his BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2011, and MFA from the Department of Art, Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in 2016. Max has performed and exhibited at DEMO Project, Springfield, IL; Bar4000, Sector 2337, Prairie, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; AZ-West, Joshua Tree National Park, CA; Signal Gallery, New York, NY; Ghost, Deep River, CT; What Pipeline, Detroit, MI; Federico Vavassori, Milan, and the Manila Institute, New York, NY.
John-Elio Reitman (b. 1990) studied at Dawson College, The Cooper Union, and holds and MFA from Bard College. He has participated in exhibitions at UBS Bard Exhibition Center, Bar4000, DAAB, CANADA, and Gallery Four. He currently lives as a guest on the unceded territories of the Canarsee and Lenape peoples.
CiCi Wu was born in 1989 in Beijing and grew up in Hong Kong, and currently lives and works in New York City. She studied at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong (2012), and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (2015). She has had solo exhibitions at 47 Canal, New York (2018), Bonnevalle, Noisy-le-Sec, France (2018), and has participated in group exhibitions at Para Site, Hong Kong (2018), Triangle Art Association, New York (2017), VisArts Center, Rockville, USA (2015). She co-founded an artist-run residency and exhibition space PRACTICE in New York (2015).