Seven Sisters' first group exhibition, Like a Crowd of Extras, is a companion to Michael Cline's concurrent exhibition, Havre de Grace. The show invites conversations about domesticity, isolation, interiority, and spiritual entanglement. We are pleased to highlight works by 7S-represented artists Margot Becker and Elaine Reichek, recent sculptures by larí garcía and Vincent Pocsik, and paintings by Alan Reid and Urubingwaru.
The exhibition's title borrows from Elaine Reichek's embroidery with a quote by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova written during her escape to Tashkent-Leningrad during World War II. "...And in the next room, the future was still trampling around like a crowd of extras..." The air of the future–heavy with emotion and inevitability–exerts a physical presence to embody the anxiety of the unknown. Margot Becker's tactile weavings mark the passage of time, while her loosely gridded patterns evoke barriers between open and closed spaces. Alan Reid's painting Starved for Affection lengthens the veil between interior and exterior, depicts an outsider's mania, and pokes fun at artists' worries.
The domestic sphere further blurs when Vincent Pocsik's cherrywood floor lamp anthropomorphizes into a gangly figure topped with a luminous lampshade/head. Nearby, two sunflowers (with eyes) spring out of a single cowboy boot carved in oak; Pocsik has said he sees sunflowers as “spiritual aliens waving in the wind.”
In his first showing in the United States, Indonesian artist Urubingwaru's tender images of forlorn figures in interiors sometimes overlap in their transparency. larí garcía, a current Core artist-in-residence, presents a small trap made from rattlesnake rattlers, tree of heaven seeds, and other lures to capture movement and set spirits on their way. Glimpses of others' lives and spaces give physicality to things and feelings unseen, lurking beyond view.
larí garcía (b. 1994, Miami, FL; lives in Houston, TX) is an artist who explores mutations in mediumship practices, necromancy, and geographic hauntology. garcía uses various spiritual value systems, offering a perspective on the void between life and death. Their research focuses on superstition, folklore, and ghost stories that are related to the decline or legacy of late-stage capitalism. They create sculptures that respond to the non-human made of found objects, plant, and animal matter to create a working system of magic. Often substituting “ingredients” in these “recipes” as these materials become endangered, illegal, or extinct. This circumstance leads to an evolution in how these systems of magical objects appear over time. García received a BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design and an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. They are currently a Core Artist in Residence at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. (bio via Sawyer Yards)
Vincent Pocsik (b. 1985, Cleveland, OH, lives in Los Angeles, CA) received an MA in Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles (SCI-ARC) and a BS from Bowling Green State University, OH. He starts his artistic process by sketching a design free-hand from multiple perspectives with a pencil on paper; through animation software he further refines the shape, which is then rough-cut with a CNC Router. Pocsik then hand carves and sands the work to perfect the form. "Beautifully crafted and puzzlingly surreal, the illuminating sculptures are thinkers, charged with intellectual and emotional energy. They are also calm, composed interrogations of the body." He has enjoyed recent solo exhibitions at 1932 home of gallery founder Jessica Silverman and writer Sarah Thornton; Objective Gallery New York; Objective Gallery, Shanhai; and Twentieth Exhibitions, LA. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Object Gallery, St. Moritz Switzerland and the Marfa Invitational at Room 57 Gallery, Marfa, TX. (bio notes via Jessica Silverman Gallery)
Alan Reid (b. 1976,TX, lives in Brooklyn, NY) has had recent exhibitions at XYZcollective, Tokyo; Eric Ruschman, Chicago, NY; Soldes, Los Angeles, CA; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York; Mary Mary, Glasgow; Lisa Cooley, New York; A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia and Patricia Low, Gstaad. Group exhibitions include Miguel Abreu, New York; Situations, New York; Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt; Poker Flats, Williamstown. His monograph Warm Equations was published in 2016 by Edition Patrick Frey. Reid's work has been reviewed by Bomb, Frieze, Vogue, NYTimes, New Yorker, and elsewhere.
Suliswanto Urubingwaru (b. Kediri, East Java, Indonesia, 2000, lives in Yogyakarta, ID) is an artist, researcher, and writer, as well as the co-founder of Titik Kumpul Forum, an art collective in Yogyakarta. In his work, Urubingwaru often intersects visual and literature as a modus operandi of narratology. He uses fiction and interpretation to explore themes related to history, myth, and identity through drawing, painting, installation, and public art: in The Equator Travelogues: Brazil, Southeast Asia, Oceania, published by Biennale Yogyakarta Foundation (2022) he writes a reflective account of art in the regional landscape. He was awarded a bronze award in the Pekan Seni Mahasiswa Nasional (PEKSIMINAS), by the National Achievement Center (2020), received the 2nd best order, East Java Culture and Tourism Office (2018) for his short story "Ludruk Lakon Sarip Tambak Oso," and is currently completing his studies in Fine Arts, ISI Yogyakarta.
