Objects at Hand
XoXo Gallery
218 West Saratoga Street, 3rd Floor
Baltimore , MD
I'm thrilled to be part of Objects at Hand, a group show curated by Elizabeth English opening June 12, 6–9pm at XoXo Gallery in Baltimore.
For this one I'm showing a few new pieces and venturing into slightly new territory: design objects.
I'm presenting a segment from my YAGU series installed on a phone, alongside two "dice" stools made from solid uncured oak salvaged at Camp Small, Baltimore's urban wood reclamation yard, where the city's downed public trees are processed and made in lumber.
The YAGU piece lives on a phone: intended to scroll past, pocket. The stools are the opposite: heavy, grounded living oak you can actually sit on. Chance and divination show up in pretty much everything I make, and so does an ecological pull — toward the land, the visual materials of an exhausting walk. Those threads usually live a little apart from my digital work, and closing that gap is something I'm always chipping away at. The dice form felt right for a show that leans so hard into play and process. A small joke about weight, luck, and the games we build our days around.
One of the few times all of that actually fused was an AR project I made walking the western coast of Latvia — the digital, the land, and the endurance exercise all folded into one piece. I don't land there often, but this show feels like another one of those rare moments where it all comes together in the same place.
It's a treat to be showing alongside so many of my colleagues I admire. If you're around, come by the opening. I will be there… in person.
Curatorial Statement
Ideas and materials meet in the world of objects. Today’s artists and designers challenge habitual thinking about objects and our relationships to them by means of fearless dedication to play, process, and a willingness to let the audience into the conversation.
The result is an array of work that is less concerned with disciplinary boundaries and more invested in possibility. What are the conceptual potentials of craft? How do we identify with making? How do we engage our audiences? The resulting work is dynamic, generative, and generous. A playful and nuanced mediation of materials and ideas, the work shown here asks us to rethink the nature of the constructed world.
Objects at Hand is curated by Elizabeth English.
Participating artists: Sam Acuff / Hellen Ascoli / Maria Barcelo-Tous / Sasha Baskin / Sophia Belkin / Mark Cameron / Chris Combs / Dave Greber / John Herndon / Elliot Keeley / Anastasia Laurenzi / Andy Lowrie / Jude Pullin / Kim Rice / Kirsten Rook / April Wood
