Gravity, a proposal: organized by Cameron Martin

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present Gravity, a proposal, a group exhibition featuring works by Barbara Ess, Dana Lok, Jameson Magrogan, Monique Mouton, Brandon Ndife, and Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, organized by Cameron Martin. The exhibition will be on view in the back galleries April 14 through May 22, 2022.  

As the structuring principle of the exhibition, gravity is understood as both the fundamental force attracting bodies and mass towards the center of the earth, and the palpable weight of importance, solemnity, and full understanding. The emerging and established artists featured in this show engage with ideas of gravity through a variety of readings and representations. Presented together, the exhibition opens new channels of correspondence, exploring interactions between works and juxtaposing artists at different stages in the trajectories of their practices.     

Gravity is familiar to the ambient, low-fi photographs of Barbara Ess—its force and pressure, as well as the possibility of its suspension. Deceivingly simple in its subject matter, Stairs (Shut-in Series), 2018-19, shows a haunting illumination of a set of steps emerging from surrounding darkness. Dense shadow suffuses the image, contrasted against hazy light in bringing form to surface. Viewing the image, one cannot help but feel the weight of their own body, and its potential for ascent or descent.

Dana Lok’s work explores transformative processes of ideas as they move between language and visualization, and the compositional interactions of illusion and fact. Weight, texture, and shadow imbue her drawing with a sense of tactility and dimensionality. The gravity of her work lies in the tension introduced between the interpretation of coded statements and the perceived recognition of visual forms.

Jameson Magrogan’s paintings employ compositional strategies that evoke images of containers or vessels filled from the top. Semitransparent layers of paint are laid upon the canvas, building up deep hues and developing a solidity of painted systems. His practice wrestles with the histories of biomorphic abstraction, and its potential within our present moment. 

While Monique Mouton is known more for her spare, subtle paintings on paper, her “Lean” wood works consider an ambiguous yet productive neither/nor relationship to painting and sculpture. Standing at 96” inches tall, Untitled (2013) can be experienced as both monumental and provisional in its structure. The dark blue color of the paint instills it with a density of form, particularly when viewed head-on, while the side perspective reveals it to be more yielding than how it initially appears.

Brandon Ndife fuses organic and human-made forms to produce effects of decay, precarity, and transmogrification. In Organ (2019), the plumbing beneath a ready-made sink is opened, showing an earthen mass adhering itself to the pipes below. The dark pigmented resin contrasts with the clean white of the sink’s exterior and the metallic sheen of the plumbing: an alien encroachment within an otherwise utilitarian setting. Utilizing these raw and found materials, Ndife’s sculptures displace familiar items into environments of regrowth and dynamic decomposition.

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi zeroes in on colonial and revolutionary histories manifest in everyday experience, engaging with the shadowed forces that of globalization, and their pervasive visual interventions within contemporary communities. This body of work, titled Descendente (La Ley Del Monte), revolves around concepts of “descent” and “mountain” as they relate to historical apparitions of the Mexican Revolution.