Western Exhibitions’ booth at the 2021 NADA Miami fair will feature new paintings by gallery artist Ryan Travis Christian alongside three artists new to Western Exhibitions, all of whom will have solo shows in 2021 or 2022 at the gallery: paintings by Azikiwe Mohammed, fiber-intensive sculptures by Jade Yumang and paintings on paper by Lauren Wy. This will be the NADA Miami debut for all four artists who share interests in world-building, decadence, Dionysian logic, and exploring the line between pleasure and pain.
Access the NADA Miami website here
To request a preview, please contact Scott Speh: scott@westernexhibitions.com
For images/information, please contact Hannah Cusimano: hannah@westernexhibitions.com
Schedule:
VIP Preview By Invitation
Wednesday, December 1, 2021: 10 am – 2 pm
Public Days
Wednesday, December 1, 2021: 2 pm – 8 pm
Thursday, December 2, 2021: 11 am – 7 pm
Friday, December 3, 2021: 11 am – 7 pm
Saturday, December 4, 2021: 11 am – 7 pm
Artist bios:
RYAN TRAVIS CHRISTIAN is an artist who pokes taboos and fluffs his intrusive thoughts, going against better taste in pursuit of a new type of feeling that can only be called tragic-erotic. Known for his sfumato-heavy graphite drawings, which often place anthropomorphic figures seemingly plucked from early 20th-century animation into sordid, soft-focus milieus, Christian is now magnifying his obsessive micro-transgressions in girthy paint: public satire at impregnable scale, all the while continuing his tendency of poking at the paradoxical relationship between childish cartoons and ominous messages in a darkly distinctive style.
AZIKIWE MOHAMMED’s work is rooted in themes of Black place-making, prioritizing, and at its core, the experiences, needs, and subjectivity of people of color in America. An ongoing orbit of his practice is New Davonhaime, a conceptual city conceived by Mohammed that provides a sustainable version of a self-dictated future for Black residents of this country, as well as being a site of interventions and actions in both formal and non-traditional exhibition spaces. Flowers, candles, and drinks are recurring motifs throughout his work, objects that each have the unique ability to signify both tragedy and celebration. For NADA Miami 2021, Western Exhibitions will show paintings that expand on Mohammed’s recurring investigation of bars, beers and cocktails, emphasizing a sense of togetherness and belonging, no matter the cause.
LAUREN WY’s work investigates identity and self-presentation as they relate to power relationships, cult and tribal grouping, femme presentation, ritual and the solipsistic need to touch each other. Her recent series of lush scenes bathed in personal secrets is an exploration of a partially imagined pseudo-narrative netherworld haunted by an unidentified collective trauma. Through blurred lines and overlapping color fields, Wy continues her slow, sultry inquisition of identity in large-scale, elegant and tender watercolor paintings.
JADE YUMANG marries sculptural craft and literary appropriation by working from two 1964 articles on homosexuality and relating them to the “gendered site of suburban living” in the mid-20th century. Using monochromatic color schemes and “gay spatter” patterning, Yumang recreates materials and objects that reference domesticity. Fabric-stuffed hands, arms, legs, and feet swell and curve to interact with textile versions of everyday household objects and attire. In seemingly innocuous sculptures, creeping limbs reach, encircle, and become tangled with the artist’s domestic constructions, separating the idea of queerness from a purely sexual state (as often dramatized and stigmatized in mass media) and instead, asking questions about everyday life in North America.