A suite of prints by Joy Garnett titled Deep Dish; photographs by Thomas Albdorf from his Former Writer: Colour on Surface series; a portfolio of digital prints by William Powhida titled What Is Art?
Objects collected over the years shift around constantly in our home, drifting towards unstable finality and specialization zones. These migratory combinations create histories—new trajectories formed with uncertain futures. Used readymades imbued with loss, then time, or nostalgia. Sometimes these may be records of events, or forms just observed. Maybe they can’t even be moved. Maybe they shouldn’t be. They all feel accursed—that unites them. Old orders of qualification/quantification dissolve. Not being able to throw away something like a plastic Lunchables container or an empty humidor comes at a cost. A system of belief emerges.
“I think about my work as nostalgically being similar to songs in the way music becomes a place holder for moments in our personal histories. Different points in my personal narrative generate specific images to which I can attribute a sonic reference. The music of Bob Mould was a soundtrack to a large portion of my life. I devoured every release by the bands Hüsker Dü and Sugar, as well as all of Mould’s solo albums, singles, and ep’s that I could find. I think his songwriting influenced my aesthetic a great deal. There are pop sensibilities to his songwriting that function much like the way I approach composition and color. Simple, minimal, direct, and at times romantic, yet he always manages to shift gears and not allow his work to become trite, or cliche, pop music. In a similar way, I am using a minimal or reductive aesthetic that employs an acknowledgement of humanity and celebrates it. When I was in graduate school, the painter Tom Nozkowski said my work was ‘a type of punk minimalism.’ But I think it deviates from being explicitly ‘punk.’ I hope the work moves through similar variations that underground music saw in the post punk era.