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South South

February 26 – April 11, 2021

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

South South, Installation view

South South

Installation view

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown (2021)

Luis Camnitzer Compass, 2021

Luis Camnitzer
Compass, 2021
Modified compass in wood case
1.13h x 3w x 3w in closed (2.9h x 7.6w x 7.6d cm closed)

Luis Camnitzer Untitled, 1968

Luis Camnitzer
Untitled, 1968
Signed, dated, and numbered on recto
Etching on paper
23.75h x 24.25w in (60.3h x 61.6w cm)
28h x 29w x 1.5d in framed (71.1h x 73.7w x 3.8d cm framed)
Edition of 10 plus 2 AP (AP 2/2)

Luis Camnitzer Signature, c. 1985

Luis Camnitzer
Signature, c. 1985
Acrylic on globe
8.25h x 12.5w in (21.08h x 31.75w cm)
 

Luis Camnitzer Telescope, 1967/1990

Luis Camnitzer
Telescope, 1967/1990
Engraved glass
4h x 16w x 2.25d in (10.16h x 40.64w x 5.84d cm)

Regina Silveira Touch #11, 2013

Regina Silveira
Touch #11, 2013
Engraved aluminum composite
82.63h x 124.13w in (210h x 315w cm)

Regina Silveira Plugged 1-3, 2011

Regina Silveira
Plugged 1-3, 2011
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered on recto
Photo etching
26h x 19w in each (66h x 48.3w cm each)
Edition of 6 (#5/6)

Ricardo Brey Wooden Face, 2013

Ricardo Brey
Wooden Face, 2013
Mixed media
28.25h x 12.5w x 12.13d in (72h x 32w x 31d cm)

Ricardo Brey Fern at the edge of the road, 2017

Ricardo Brey
Fern at the edge of the road, 2017
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
28.63h x 43.13w in (72.7h x 109.5w cm)
32.5h x 47w x 2d in framed (82.5 x 119.4 x 5.1 cm framed)

Ricardo Brey Soaring, 2003

Ricardo Brey
Soaring, 2003
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
19.5h x 25.5w in (49.5h x 64.8w cm)
23.5h x 29.38w x 1.5d in framed (59.7h x 74.6w x 3.8d cm framed)

Ricardo Brey Nest, 2003

Ricardo Brey
Nest, 2003
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
22.13h x 29.88w in (56h x 76w cm)
26.25h x 33.75w x 1.5d in framed (66.675h x 85.725w x 3.81d cm framed)

Melvin Edwards Luanda, 1999

Melvin Edwards
Luanda, 1999
Welded steel
13.25h x 12w x 8.5d in (33.66h x 30.48w x 21.59d cm)

Melvin Edwards Untitled, c. 1974

Melvin Edwards
Untitled, c. 1974
Spray paint on paper
24h x 18w in (60.96h x 45.72w cm)

Melvin Edwards Untitled, 1982

Melvin Edwards
Untitled, 1982
Signed and dated "Jan 4, '82," lower right
Mixed media on paper
30.13h x 40w in (76.51h x 101.6w cm)

Valeska Soares Sugar Blues XIV, 2020

Valeska Soares
Sugar Blues XIV, 2020
Collage with used cake, candy, chocolate boxes and trays mounted on ph neutral board
39h x 32.25w x 5.5d in (99.1h x 81.9w x 14d cm)
39.5h x 32.5h x 7w in framed (100.3 x 82.5 x 17.8 cm framed)

Valeska Soares Doubleface (Buff Titanium White/Sap Green), 2019

Valeska Soares
Doubleface (Buff Titanium White/Sap Green), 2019
Oil paint and cut out on vintage oil painting
18.13h x 15.13w x 2.5d in (46.04h x 38.42w x 6.35d cm)

Press Release

Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown presents South South, an exhibition that examines poetics of space and orientation in works by five Gallery artists: Ricardo BreyLuis CamnitzerMelvin EdwardsRegina Silveira, and Valeska Soares. Even as movement across the globe remains constrained, these artists illuminate the imaginative potential of artworks to recontextualize travel, communication, and relation. The works, in a range of mediums, are also presented in a digital exhibition for South South Veza, an online community, anthology, live resource and aggregator dedicated to art from the Global South and its diaspora.

Luis Camnitzer’s Compass (2021) is a deceptively ordinary object, crucially adjusted. An old-fashioned compass has its traditional face replaced so that wherever it lands, the needle now points to only one cardinal direction: South. With his signature economy of gesture, Camnitzer invites the viewer to reconsider their own position and consequently how they view places and people in relation to themselves. Untitled (1968) is an elegant riff on the tenuous nature of individual perspective. The stenciled word “sun” descends from left to right until a horizon line, stops the letters short. If the text seems to have a clear meaning, the structure of the image subverts it: While most English speakers would read the text from left to right, reading it from right to left (as one would with some non-English alphabets) gives the graphic impression of a sunrise. Where Untitled makes deft use of horizontal space to illustrate this thought, Signature (1980) uses the sphere to give shape to the concept that universal scope and personal experience are simultaneously opposed and inseparable. Appropriating a globe as a Duchampian readymade, with Camnitzer’s signature scrawled across its circumference, yields another instance of shifting perspective. Signature can be seen as either reducing the world to the scope of the artist’s vision or expanding an individual artistic capacity to encompass the whole globe. The ambiguous meaning places the viewer in an interpretive dialogue with the work, which remains open to either––or neither––reading.

Where Camnitzer’s works place the poetics of time and space on a universal scale, Regina Silveira’s Touch #11 (2013) magnifies subjective, embodied experience. Six square aluminum prints depict silhouetted hands, a motif in Silveira’s work since the 1980s. The tender, personal prints are set against the aluminum in an oversized scale. This distortion in dimension––in this case of such a recognizable, individuated part of the body––creates an effect of both intimacy and mystery, what Silveira calls “gaps in perception.” These moments of simultaneous dissonance and recognition evoke in the viewer a reconsideration of scale, position, and perspective, illuminating the spaces of darkness in our perception and self-knowledge.

These poetics of space and orientation contain an intrinsic tension: How to reconcile, within a single artwork, the multiple valences of place and history that we all live, sometimes simultaneously? In Ricardo Brey’s work of the past decade, his meticulous approach reveals the subtle consonances across seemingly disparate narratives, languages, and aesthetics, which Brey transforms into cohesive objects of deep resonance. In Wooden Face (2013), he alludes to the colloquial Cuban idiom “cara de madera,” usually used in jest to refer to someone with a stoic “poker face.” An antique wooden ironing board supports a small rock with a trumpet protruding from it, circled by concentric strands of chaquira beads. Found black scarves meant to simulate hair around the face frame the sculpture, referencing traditional Fang masks from Cameroon and Gabon. In Fern at the edge of the road, a thistle plant drawn in bloodred chalk anchors the center of the composition. Its leaves and branches extend outwards towards the paper’s edges, underscoring the plant’s resilience. Gestural gouache brushstrokes and Baroque-inspired patterns center the focal point of the drawing, highlighting the growth of the thistle––essentially a weed that grows on the side of the road. Spawning roots and surviving distress, the thistle plant is a recurring motif in Brey’s practice, indicative of the artist’s own struggles and trajectory from Cuba to Belgium.

Brey’s journeys recall legacies of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, which are indelibly inscribed in the histories of his native Cuba and his current home of Belgium. It is a concern he shares with Melvin Edwards, whose decades-long Lynch Fragments series grapples evocatively with the experiences of the African diaspora in the United States. Luanda (1999) is one of the many Lynch Fragments focused on Edwards’ relationship with Africa, which has been significant in his work since his first visit to the continent at the height of the independence movements in the 1970s, to the establishment of his studio in Dakar, Senegal, which he has maintained since 2000. Luanda marks the artist’s visit to Angola in 1999, and pays tribute to the artists, intellectuals, and friends with whom he connected there. Straddling both Africa and the African Diaspora, the Lynch Fragments are an embodiment of inseparable histories.

These engagements across time and space are thrown into stark relief at our current point in history, which is so defined by immobility and marked by the presence of mortality. Throughout her career, Valeska Soares has described the complexities of a Brazilian identity whose fluidity can be uncomfortable: Feeling insufficiently Brazilian in her native country, while experiencing a foreigner’s alienation abroad, she occupies a space as a citizen of the world that can feel both cosmopolitan and adrift. This duality between global and individual frequently emerges in her work via a focus on the body, often initially concealed behind refined conceptualist strategies. Soares’s collage series Sugar Blues, begun in 2013, exemplifies this combination of vulnerable human emotions with rigorous formal composition. Made from the wrappers and boxes of sweets Soares has consumed, each piece in Sugar Blues can only exist because she has consumed more, weaving intense feelings of memory, pleasure, and longing into precise visual compositions. The empty wrappers also evoke a sense of melancholy and mortality, as residual markers of a tender interior body that no longer exists. The Sugar Blues works are meditations on the passage of time marked through consumption; their emotional poignancy and conceptual resonance take on a new poignancy in our present context, where time can seem to pass unmoored and unmarked.

Spanning mediums, continents, and languages, with concerns both collective and deeply personal, South South offers multiple points of entry for reconsidering our sense of perspective and our global position.