Opening Reception:

Friday, September 20th
6-8pm 

On view Sept 20 - Jan 4

 

 

Curatorial Statement

 

What Are You Hiding? explores the interplay between our deeper desires and fears and how these manifest in artistic expression. This show invites artists to reflect on hidden fantasies, how they’d like to see the world, things they hope to change, or who they might become. It's about unearthing layers within ourselves and our work, revealing what is often concealed from the public eye. We want to understand what’s being shown but not said, creating a dialogue around the diverse ways we navigate and present our identities through the work we create.

-- Jarid Blue
@kingmallard

 

Jarid Blue (Brooklyn, NY) is the creator of Light Baths, an ongoing photography and installation project that uses light projections to create safe, empowering spaces for people to explore their boundaries and embrace their individuality. The project invites participants to experience a transformative journey through projected light and detailed patterns, fostering self-discovery, boosted confidence, and profound self-acceptance. Through this approach, Jarid aims to create spaces where individuals can celebrate their unique forms and cultivate radiating self-love.

Although my work Light Baths is not on display in this show, its essence of creating safe, empowering spaces continues through the curation of What Are You Hiding?. This show aims to provide participating artists with a platform to express themselves and share parts of their identity they might not have revealed before, aligning closely with the mission of my Light Baths project.

 

Exhibiting Artists:

  

Chris Carr
@Bkwildlife
A Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary conceptual artist, photographer, emcee, educator and instrumentalist.

Connection:
"What is identity, how do we hide ourselves in public and how do we hide ourselves from ourselves. What is seen even as we hide?
What does the mind create from what is observed? How much of our worldview is self creative? These are the questions to explore while viewing my art.."

 

gwen charles
@gwencharles.studio

New York based multi-disciplinary artist gwen charles (b. 1975) interjects the performing body, often her own, as an exploration of the female experience in live performances and videos interweaving sculpture, video and movement. Performances, often in alternative spaces, take inspiration from everyday objects, dream imagery and historical references, merging elements of reality and magical realism to reflect on the absurdity of daily life. Recent works broach themes surrounding the Anthropocene, ecofeminism, reconnecting to nature, caregiving and feelings of loss and grief, all embodied by the female figure.

Connection:
Replicating the imagery from a sleeping dream, a woman reaches ecstasy while outside in nature. As her emotions intensifies, more colored smoke rises from her body. Theres  a tension between desire and wanting to hide it. In Nature I am allowed to surrender and be my authentic, whole, pleasurable self.

 

IMMA
@imma_musica

IMMA is a multiartist combining analog video art and painting techniques to crate unique paintings that capture the idea of video glitch art and bringing it from the screen to the canvas

Connection:
"An emotional person distancing themself from intimacy and find society to be heartless and misunderstood.
But within, there's still desire to let the fears go and overcome emotional boundaries "

 

J
@sinwithoutgod

J (b. 2000, New York) is a queer photo-sculptor. They have exhibited in New York, NY at Temple Gallery, and they have self-produced public installations on The High Line and in Washington Square Park. They have had their work featured in The Underground of the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York, the web-based publication The Daring, and The Visual Opinion of the School of Visual Arts.

Connection:
I manipulate photos of my own anatomy as a response to living in a body that feels different than it looks. My gender identity is complex, ever-shifting, and doesn’t necessarily correspond with the way I appear on the surface. My work reflects the multiplicity and mutability of bodies and identity.

 

Jack Forbes
@a_failed_cartoonist

Jack Forbes (A Failed Cartoonist) is a Brooklyn native and mercenary artist applying his skills across a wide swath of subject matter and clientele. These pieces were created during a period where he attended several furry conventions in an attempt to peek at the inner workings of a little known subculture.

Connection:
You may not know it but some of your best friends could secretly be furries, desiring to unleash their more animalistic side or just escape the limitations of humanity.

Meagan Jain
@meaganjain

My work explores contemporary symbolism, focusing on reinvention and cultural reflection. By creating symbols like vulvas and wombs, I aim to unlock inner understanding and celebrate overlooked aspects of the human experience, challenging historical norms. Mysticism underpins my work, confronting norms that venerate masculine deities while neglecting the vulva and womb, once central to ancient societies. Using reflective acrylic and glass mirror, I revive this reverence, engaging viewers in introspection. Through sinuous portals and womb-like symbols, I introduce a feminist-focused geometric lexicon, creating a new form of iconography.

Connection:
Mirrors reflect back to us the depths of our desires in how they reflect our aspirations of what we want to look like, how we want to come across, and how we put ourselves together for the outside world. Mirrors allow us to see ourselves as we are, while simultaneously allowing us to construct what we want to become. Mirrors reflect the seen and unseen, the present and the desired, and unearth from within us our deepest yearnings.

 

Meg Eplett
@meglovespaint

Meg Eplett is a designer and artist living in Brooklyn. Her work is a playful, childlike interpretation of classical subject matter. The “figure collages” are done at live posing sessions she regularly attends or hosts in Brooklyn. For her, collage is a form of being present and engaged - the happy accidents and just-right moments only happen if you are paying attention

Connection:
I host a monthly figure drawing session in my apartment with artists and non-artists. Many of the woman who model are friends and are posing for the first time. It is an opportunity to embrace and celebrate their body in an environment that is completely supportive. My collages are a puposefully vibrant and playful - a reflection of the celebratory nature of these sessions.

 

Priscilla Darko
@priscilla.jdarko

"Throughout my life, I have been driven by a passion to challenge viewers' perspectives and disrupt preconceived notions. By using juxtapositions in my work, I aim to inspire a shift in how we perceive the world.

Connection:
My photo series, ""Cupid’s Angels,"" from the broader collection ""Regurgitated Art,"" invites you to question traditional views of strippers.  Depicting angels in this context, I invite you to reconsider and question the stark contrasts between the sacred and the profane."

 

Sammy Bennett
@sammy_bennett1

Sammy Bennett (b. 1990 , Ypsilanti, MI) is an interdisciplinary artist that works across painting, printmaking, textiles, and installation to document his lived experiences from country to city. Surrounding neighborhoods and apartments become an overarching portrait of the artist employed through specific objects and locations he has inhabited. Bennett received a BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design in 2012 and an MFA from Michigan State University in 2016.

Connection:
This work relates to the theme by simply hiding in plain sight. The fact that much of the production and consumption of pornography is still shrouded in secrecy and shameful masking, hidden from public view, only makes it more fascinating. Many people consume pornography but few feel able to admit it. This work explores sexuality and its representations and puts an emphasis on how important it is to joke, laugh and create dialogue about our hidden desires.

 

Theo Golden
@tgoldenart

Theo is a transmasc queer artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His work explores gender, sexuality, and intimacy through mythological illustrations, tattoo, and mixed media sculpture and painting.

Connection:
Throughout this work, embedded into the objects and architecture are appropriated pornographic imagery layered in a matrix of aesthetic pleasure that rejoices in sexual experimentation. It promotes body positivity and porn literacy. The warm colors draw viewers in while patterns flatten the space. Hiding beneath the patterns is a psychologically and sexually charged fantasy of overt presentations of sexual encounters.

 

Val Yang
@piggyology

Val, an illustrator in Brooklyn, uses a unique color palette inspired by printmaking techniques. Her whimsical, innocent style often explores complex and thought-provoking themes, inviting viewers to uncover deeper meanings and engage in nuanced reflection.

Connection:
My deepest desire is to be filled, a yearning that is intimately connected to my deepest fear: being filled. This duality reflects a profound internal struggle, where the act symbolizes both fulfillment and a potential annihilation of self. This series navigates this paradox, capturing the simultaneous allure and dread of vulnerability and completeness.

 

Zach Villafana
@steadyprime

From San Antonio, Texas. Zach Villafaña (32, Brooklyn)  is a multimedia artist, filmmaker and technologist. Exploring the future of human sexuality, desire and connection — Villafaña’s boundary-breaking meditations are relics from a hypersexual and increasingly isolationist future.

Connection:
Inhibitions are self-defined. Through society, through culture, past relationships, and upbringing. With each new sexual self discovery a new locked and burdensome chain is removed and new possibilities emerge. These revelations are exciting, and terrifying.. This piece explores the freedom and fear that comes with shaping one’s own sexual identity while the self-inflicted weight of outside pressure bears down.