AFTER THE BODY
ALIEN BODY
EVERY BODY
BODY
Gail Blank
Bart Exposito
Robert Kieswetter
Nicky Lesser
William D. Lewis
Ken Lomont
Jay McCafferty
Joanna Powell
David Quadrini
Sarah Rozell
JP Spencer
Kathryn W. Schmidt
Jonathan Beaumont Thomas
MarieVic
August 11 - September 22, 2024
25 Jay St. Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brackett Creek Exhibitions is pleased to present After the Body / Alien Body / Every Body / Body, an exhibition featuring work by Gail Blank, Bart Exposito, Robert Kieswetter, Nicky Lesser, William D. Lewis, Ken Lomont, Jay McCafferty, Joanna Powell, David Quadrini, Sarah Rozell, JP Spencer, Kathryn W. Schmidt, Jonathan Beaumont Thomas, and MarieVic.
The exhibition presents drawings, paintings, sculptures, and a print and a video that speculate on what happens after the body or in the in the space between the body and its environment. The works feature avatars in the human, animal, and hybrid forms (or lack thereof).
Body horror is a sub-genre that can be traced back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) and came back in vogue with the rise of technological advancement, bodybuilding, plastic surgery and expanded sexual mores of the late 1970’s and 1980’s. David Cronenberg and ORLAN are examples at the forefront of artists exploring mutability of and violations to the body. Asking—what happens when we force an evolution or change that advance at a rate beyond our “natural” environment? Is it no longer a mind/body problem, but an environment/body problem?
The works in this exhibition, which all have been made over the past 40 years, can be considered of another genre: post-body horror. The changes to the body are not presented to define power (nobody is manipulating the flesh); rather, the bodies are not present. Our own bodies are even considered “other” because they are primarily observed from the outside. A contemporary representation of the body, then, whether a vessel body, re-incarnate body, or absent body, may just asymptotically be reaching for what that means as nothingness.
The exhibition presents drawings, paintings, sculptures, and a print and a video that speculate on what happens after the body or in the in the space between the body and its environment. The works feature avatars in the human, animal, and hybrid forms (or lack thereof).
Body horror is a sub-genre that can be traced back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915) and came back in vogue with the rise of technological advancement, bodybuilding, plastic surgery and expanded sexual mores of the late 1970’s and 1980’s. David Cronenberg and ORLAN are examples at the forefront of artists exploring mutability of and violations to the body. Asking—what happens when we force an evolution or change that advance at a rate beyond our “natural” environment? Is it no longer a mind/body problem, but an environment/body problem?
The works in this exhibition, which all have been made over the past 40 years, can be considered of another genre: post-body horror. The changes to the body are not presented to define power (nobody is manipulating the flesh); rather, the bodies are not present. Our own bodies are even considered “other” because they are primarily observed from the outside. A contemporary representation of the body, then, whether a vessel body, re-incarnate body, or absent body, may just asymptotically be reaching for what that means as nothingness.