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Originating from the peculiar language a surgeon used to describe a close friend’s organ and threaded through a poem by Afaa Michael Weaver that describes the speaker’s body as a “city of bones,” the exhibition focuses on works that call to mind the abstractions connoted by the use of the word body. The exhibition considers the ways the word body is used not only as an abstraction and metaphor, but also as a concrete object in a world of objects, and importantly, as reference to a subject, a material and singular being otherwise known as a human.

I am a city of bones features works by an extraordinary group of emerging and established artists working across media including Dylan Beckman, Morgan Buck, Corinne Hamilton, Timothy Yanick Hunter, Juliana Huxtable, Mona Kowalska, Jenine Marsh, Martin Soto Climent, Pace Taylor, and Isabel Yellin.

Central to the exhibition is Sleeping Hermaphroditus, a performance by Los Angeles-based artist Corinne Hamilton modeled on the oft-copied ancient sculpture. Just as Juliana Huxtable’s fictionalizing/essayistic self portraits question normative attitudes toward gender and queer sexuality, Hamilton brings the sleeping figure of Hermaphroditus to life, ushering into focus societal responses and attitudes toward trans women such as herself.

Imagining a hybrid, beyond-human body, Huxtable’s TBT, is a multi-layered work: a mock-seductive self-portrait of the artist in reptilian full-body paint on a bed in a feminized bedroom, the face of which she has collaged over with a cartoon-like visage of a long-lashed, lavender-eyed reptile. Affixed to the raw pine frame are vintage buttons, one of which reads “I [heart] reptilian humanoids.”

In an interview in Sculpture Martin Soto Climent notes that his series begins with the body, sensuality, and the “female energy inside me.” The sculptures use found objects, such as pantyhose, to produce sensuous, anthropomorphic sculptures. Mona Kowalska’s sculptural works cleverly abstract domestic objects (hats, hair, wool, and porcelain dishes) in form, scale, and material in works that obliquely conjure the bodies that might share space with them.

Isabel Yellin’s sculptural works appear bodily, evoking skin, viscera, or limb-like forms. Sensitive and suggestive, Yellin’s work calls to mind a corporeal interiority that carries the weight of memory, grief, and absence. Meanwhile, Jenine Marsh utilizes her own form (in this case, casts of her feet) as both the producer and site of reciprocally responsive interactions between material bodies. Marsh's recent works such as Wish Fulfillment (blue), 2023, use mixed-currency coins as an interface for the deconstruction and dispossession of subjugated identity.

Culling from the internet’s vast array of content, Morgan Buck manipulates images, screenshots, captions, and other weird kernels of the digital to produce photorealistic airbrush paintings. Reminiscent of the failures of AI to generate anatomically accurate hands, Buck’s Single Entity Hand and Flower Hybrid #1, 2023, depicts a human hand with nine digits, mysteriously posed with a flower.

Similarly interested in the interplay between “physical space, digital space, and the intangible,” Timothy Yanick Hunter subjects portraits and partial portraits to manipulations of repetition akin to photostamping as in Untitled (Taste), a recent work examining non-neutral relationships relating to Black and Afro-diasporic experiences.

In a more playful vein are Dylan Beckman’s Pedicure, a photo of feet adorned with bedazzled, ill-fitting, pink paper toenails, and Confection, an image of a bright pink tuft of cotton candy poised as a stand-in for a body on an empty bed. Equally driven by color and tenderness, Pace Taylor’s intimate paintings use bright colors in contrast to the vulnerable, and often quiet, repose of the figures depicted.

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Flux
Afaa Michael Weaver

I am a city of bones
deep inside my marrow,
a song in electric chords,
decrescendo to mute, rise
to white noise, half silences
in a blank harmony as all
comes to nothing, my eyes
the central fire of my soul,
yellow, orange, red—gone
in an instant and then back
when I am, for a glimpse,
as precise as a bird’s breath,
when I am perfect, undone
by hope when hope will not
listen, the moon wasting
to where I need not worry
that bones turn to ash,
brittle staccato in dust.

I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2, 2023
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
Morgan Buck, Single Entity Hand and Flower Hybrid #1, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 36 1/4 x 57 1/8 inches
Morgan Buck
Single Entity Hand and Flower Hybrid #1, 2023
acrylic on canvas
36 1/4 x 57 1/8 inches
Dylan Beckman, Pedicure, 2019, Archival inkjet print, 20 x 25 inches, Edition of 4 + AP 1
Dylan Beckman
Pedicure, 2019
archival inkjet print
20 x 25 inches
Edition of 4 + AP 1
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
Jenine Marsh
Wish Fulfillment (blue), 2023
cast bronze, epoxy clay, powdered pigment, acrylic
10 X 8 X 1 1/2 inches
Juliana Huxtable, TBT, 2019 12 colour archival ink on linen, collage, bespoke badges in artist frame 53 7/8 Ă— 42 1/8 Ă— 2 3/8 inches
Juliana Huxtable
TBT, 2019
12 colour archival ink on linen, collage, bespoke badges in artist frame
53 7/8 Ă— 42 1/8 Ă— 2 3/8 inches
Isabel Yellin, spatial concept, 2023, Powder coated steel, silicone, 53 x 6 x 6 inches
Isabel Yellin
spatial concept, 2023
powder coated steel, silicone
53 x 6 x 6 inches
Morgan Buck, Megabirth, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Morgan Buck
Megabirth, 2023
acrylic on canvas
14 x 11 inches
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
Mona Kowalska, Untitled, 2023, Paper, metal, wood, linen, 10 3/4 x 7 3/8 x 1/2 inches
Mona Kowalska
Untitled, 2023
paper, metal, wood, linen
10 3/4 x 7 3/8 x 1/2 inches
Timothy Yanick Hunter, Untitled (Taste), 2022, Dye sublimation fabric SEG print, 55 x 46 x 1/2 inches
Timothy Yanick Hunter
Untitled (Taste), 2022
dye sublimation fabric SEG print
55 x 46 x 1/2 inches
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
I am a city of bones, 2023, Installation view, ILY2
Martin Soto Climent, Gossip "falling from the sky", 2023, Tights, plexiglass mirror, mounted in maple wood box, 12 1/5 x 8 1/4 x 4 inches
Martin Soto Climent
Gossip "falling from the sky", 2023
tights, plexiglass mirror, mounted in maple wood box
12 1/5 x 8 1/4 x 4 inches
Pace Taylor, Venus as a boy, 2023, Pastel and graphite on paper, 44 x 30 inches
Pace Taylor
Venus as a boy, 2023
Pastel and graphite on paper
44 x 30 inches
Mona Kowalska, Untitled, 2021, horsehair, wood, cotton, 84 x 18 x 10 inches
Mona Kowalska
Untitled, 2021
horsehair, wood, cotton
84 x 18 x 10 inches
Pace Taylor, Weightless, the body pulls, 2023, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 30 x 22 inches
Pace Taylor
Weightless, the body pulls, 2023
charcoal and graphite on paper
30 x 22 inches
Morgan Buck, To Be Honest With You, I Didn’t Really Believe, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 36 inches
Morgan Buck
To Be Honest With You, I Didn’t Really Believe, 2022
acrylic on canvas
45 x 36 inches