SEE YOU SOON

Sarah E. Brook + KB Jones + Gabrielle Mertz + Sarah Tortora

CURATED BY NAOMI LEV

Exhibition Dates: September 12, 2021 - October 17, 2021

ART LOT

The phrase “see you soon” speaks to the reopening of the city of New York and the hopefulness of actually seeing people in person, particularly after the extended lockdown of the pandemic. For the artists in this show, it’s also about understanding where we’ve come from, who we are, and where we head next. 

Gabrielle Mertz, for example, presents Hello Again, a large-scale analog GIF situated on Art Lot’s building facade overlooking the Carroll Gardens intersection. The work contains the complete data and text of three seminal and connected legislative actions on voting rights: the 15th amendment (which granted African-American men the right to vote), the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (enforcing the 15th amendment and outlawing discriminatory voting practices), and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 (which would restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965). 

With Hello Again, Mertz uses data that spans more than 150 years to expose the process of viewing in the current Age of Information and Visual Overload. The work’s layering and compressed movement is reflective not only of the artwork itself but also of democracy-building as an ever-evolving act, with steps forward and back, attempts to correct past wrongs and better the future, with the ultimate understanding that the work is never finished. 

Nearby KB Jones has created a series of cardboard structures that emphasize the fluidity, complexity, and perishability of our contemporary existence. Jones gathered recyclable cardboard boxes (the kind we receive every day from Amazon and other home-delivery brands), and painted Katsushika Hokusai’s famous ocean wave on them in various colors and patterns. 

The paint used to color these boxes is biodegradable and will likely dissolve into the ground and melt as it rains. In a paradoxical manner Jones compares the flow of the amazon to the stream of cardboard boxes we receive and then view packed on the street to be recycled -- the role of these boxes as a stream we experience across our urban streets waiting to be picked up and recycled. She also offers a contemporary view of the product and productivity via Andy Warhol’s Brillo lens and the ready-made object. 

In her playful installation Alphabet, 2021, Sarah Tortora created thirteen 8” cubes featuring a different laser-cut word for each letter of the alphabet. The words are somewhat a stream of consciousness and relate to how our minds act, our thoughts flow, and what we choose to communicate. 

These colorful plywood blocks are scattered, arranged, and rearranged to create sequential poems and are installed in a flexible and moveable manner -- they can be stacked together, or dispersed throughout. These are strongly inspired by our own experience of going back into the world after a couple years of solitude, where communication during the pandemic was brief and distant. Verbally communicating as well as gathering again are paralleled to a child learning to speak, read, and write anew -- we are baby stepping into our new reality and means of correspondence.

Two ten-foot beams stand parallel to each other, settled strongly in the ground and reaching up to the sky. Sarah E. Brook’s How We Talk to Each Other When There is Enough, 2021, is  made from reclaimed wooden ceiling joists that are both gently altered: one painted with a deep blue color gradient, the other fixed with a strip of lucite that glows in the sun. Together they move between self-definition and communion. In this abstract minimalist gesture, Brook shares her own experience of identity and desired connection: during different moments of the day the beams change their responsiveness to the sun and to each other. 

There are many different ways of understanding who we are and where we are going. This past couple of years have been a dare to self-define, to speak up and express, to create anew, and to strengthen words and actions of the past. The project at-large offers a way of communicating, collaborating, playing, and creating -- an intimate interaction that is meant to be shared and passed on to the public, the viewers of these works.

SEE YOU SOON is the third exhibition in the Gift Horse series organized in collaboration with Collective_View. Collective_View was formed in 2016 as a space for collaboration and support for female-identifying curators, artists and writers in the art field. The group focuses on exploring open dialogue around gender, art, and labor issues, as well as creating projects, exhibitions, and other events.

Art Lot is an outdoor venue located at the SW corner of Columbia & Sackett St in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The exhibition is viewable to the public from September 12-October 17, with an opening reception on Sunday, September 12th from 12-3 pm (In the case of inclement weather, the reception will be held on Sept 19th). While the artworks can be viewed from the sidewalk at any time during the exhibition dates, entrance to inside the fenced lot is by appointment only.