GARDEN LEVEL

Opening - Sunday September 30, 6-8pm On view September 30 - October 14, 2018

Catalina Ouyang ● Hayley Martell ● Ilana Harris-Babou ● Jenna Ransom ● Jenni Crain ● Michael Gac Levin ● Rindon Johnson ● Sasha Phyars-Burgess ● Tal Gilboa and Elizabeth Stehl Kleberg ● Teto Elsiddique ●Vanessa Thill

GARDEN LEVEL is a group show organized by Ada Potter in a temporary apartment space in Crown Heights.

A garden-level apartment is defined linguistically and physically by an exterior space. The outside marks the domestic interior space. This relationship, which allows difference to contribute to the construction of self, underpins the premise of the show.

This group of artists sees space, architecture, their subjects, and the environment as not wholly different from themselves. They make works that have porous boundaries. Their work emotes. They take up space but leave room. This definition of self, rather than othering the landscape or subject and defining it as outside, sees the world as not utterly exterior to their interior being. They make a home in the world.

This show makes the case for a broader definition of self that extends one’s considerations beyond the purely self-centered. Like the apartment tied to and defined by its relationship to outdoor space, these artists are making objects that exist outside of themselves yet are not foreign to their being. They are claiming space, without conquering it.

Catalina Ouyang is a visual artist and child of the Chinese diaspora by way(s) of St. Louis, New Jersey and Illinois. Her visual work has been exhibited internationally and her writing has received two Pushcart Prize nominations. She is a 2019 MFA candidate in Sculpture at Yale University.

Hayley Martell (b. 1990, Cleveland, OH) is a New York based artist whose work investigates behavioral psychology, time, gender performativity, and linguistics through sculpture, video, sound, and drawing. Martell completed her BFA at the Maryland College Institute of Art in 2012. Her work has been exhibited at MAW Gallery, Otion Front Studio, Larrie Gallery, SIGNAL, and on Rhizome.org.

Ilana Harris-Babou uses music videos, cooking shows, and home improvement television as material in an abject exploration of the American Dream. She works primarily in ceramic sculpture and video installation, and frames messy scenes with studio lighting and HD video in order to ask questions about intimacy, violence, and consumption. Harris-Babou received an MFA in New Genres from Columbia University and a BA in Art from Yale University. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States and Europe. For more information, please visit: www.ilanahb.com.

Jenna Ransom paints and draws in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in 2005 and a BA from Roanoke College in 2002.

Jenni Crain (b. 1991, New York) is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator. Crain’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux, New York (2018); Baba Yaga, Hudson, New York (2018); 321 Gallery, Brooklyn (2017); KANSAS, New York (2016); Y Gallery, New York (2015); and Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles (2014), among others. Crain will present a two-person exhibition with Miles Huston at Gordon Robichaux, New York this January 2019. Crain co-founded and co-directed Topless, a seasonal gallery based in Rockaway Beach, New York, from summer 2014–2016. Recent curatorial projects include exhibitions at Chicken Coop Contemporary, Portland, OR; Roberta Pelan, Toronto, ON; Shanaynay, Paris, FR, and the 2017 Survey Exhibition and the 2016 Alumni Exhibition at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Forthcoming curatorial projects include exhibitions at Clifford Chance, New York (October 2018); Pratt Institute, Brooklyn (October 2018); 55 Walker, New York (November 2018); and Barnard, New York (January 2019). Crain is the director of kaufmann repetto New York and the founder/organizer of O.O. & M.M., an ongoing curatorial project that encourages adaptability and deviation from standardized models of exhibition-making.

Michael Gac Levin was born in Los Angeles in 1984. His work is centered around drawing, and how it can open an exchange between inner and outer worlds. He has exhibited in various galleries in New York, including Torrance Shipman and 109 Gallery, and has released special projects with the Jewish Museum and SCREEN_. He holds a BA from the University of Chicago (Classics, ‘06) and an MFA from Pratt Institute (Printmaking, ‘15), where he currently teaches courses in drawing and creative approaches to the unconscious.

Rindon Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Johnson’s sculptures, videos and performances have been shared at Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel; Human Resources, Los Angeles; MoMA PS1; Artists Space and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne - among others. Johnson is the author of Nobody Sleeps Better Than White People from Inpatient Press, the virtual reality book, Meet in the Corner from Publishing-House.Me and Shade the King from Capricious. Johnson’s writing has been published by ArtForum, The Brooklyn Rail, Cultured, ICA Miami, The Miami Rail, The New Museum and Rhizome. Johnson lives between Brooklyn and Berlin.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess was born in Brooklyn, New York to Trinidadian parents, and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. She is interested in using photography education as community empowerment, the African diaspora, particularly in the Caribbean and Latin America, as well as learning about Pennsylvania.

Tal Gilboa & Elizabeth Stehl Kleberg work together to create collages, videos and sculptures. Tal is from Jerusalem and Elizabeth Stehl Kleberg is from Virginia. They meet while at Pratt Institute where they each received their MFA in 2016. They both currently live in Brooklyn.

Teto Elsiddique (1982-2018) was born in Manchester, England, raised in Sudan and Canada. He received his B.F.A. from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and his M.F.A from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut. Elsiddique’s work was the subject of a solo exhibition at Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, Virginia (2017) and 6BASE, Bronx, New York (2017). He participated in numerous group exhibitions including those held at The Power Plant, Toronto; Oakville Galleries, Toronto (both 2018); Abrons Arts Center, New York (2016); Green Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (2016); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Weeks Gallery, among others. He was a recipient of the Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Painting Competition, National Gallery of Canada (2017); Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant; Ralph Meyer Prize, Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut (both 2016); Nova Scotia Arts Equity Grant, Haifax (2014; and Chautauqua School of Art Residency Scholarship, New York (2013). In 2016, Elisddique received a Fountainhead Fellowship from the Virginia Commonwealth University where he served as an adjunct in the Painting and Printmaking Department.

Vanessa Thill (b. 1991, Berkeley, CA) is an artist and writer who lives and works in New York. Spillage and contamination of countless materials including oil, coffee, soap, ink, soil, and glue is the generative mode for her sculpture’s surfaces, which are then desiccated over time and slicked down with resin. With their topographical features, the sculptures serve as a microcosm of planetary and microbial vastness. Later this year she will have a solo exhibition at Larrie, New York. Recently her work has been exhibited at Stepsister, Bible, and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, the Art Newspaper, among others.