1150 25th St /
/ (slash)
Spirit & Flesh
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8 | 4-7 pm
Sydney Cain / Hung-Lun Chen / Ricki Dwyer / Charles Lee / Gregory Rick / Hannah Waiters & Narges Poursadeqi
Curated by Sam Vernon
"Deep within the spirit and flesh of my being, the fretting breath of Ancestor guides the burning faith. Sacred are the visions ingrained like gleaming sermons, preached far beyond the face of my nights. Give me the courage to know the things of life, that I may be worthy of my place. Above all, teach me to share the gifts." — John Outterbridge
Far removed from the dogmatic rigidity of rationalism’s calculations dichotomizing thought and emotional feeling, this group of artists deal in corporality and vernacularity. Spirit & Flesh celebrates the process of self-fashioning: a recognition of art as an extension-expression of oneself, one’s labor, one’s memories and inner monologue, one’s spiritual disposition, one’s transition and transformation.
Imagine an artist who wakes up to themself, and by their own action, frees themself.
In some ways, you're free when you can walk away. You're free from any type of relationship or system when you understand that you're not being ruled by unconscious attachments and desires.
Perhaps an artist’s work is truly powerful when it is becoming more distinctive, is shedding the layers of expectation and starting to say, “No. I don’t want that.”
It’s like, when you experience a trauma, you go through something extremely difficult. You understand something deep about life that other people might not understand, and it’s fine. It’s also the grace of growing, maturing. The idea of something like success (in art and life): we are encouraged to think it looks a certain way. Success takes a long time and it doesn’t just come to you – you have to investigate it. You have to open your eyes to all of the ways you have been taught what success is (in art and life) and awaken to the fact that it's up to you to choose what it is.
So how are we more able to access art’s depth and freedom, in spirit and flesh?
This show is invested in the emergence of seven artists who actively make themselves whole through making.
Curated by Sam Vernon, Spirit & Flesh is the third in a series of exhibitions at /, each organized by an independent Bay Area-based curator. Spirit & Flesh will be accompanied by a limited-edition catalogue published for the occasion, featuring an essay by Zoé Samudzi.