Exhibition at Ortega y Gasset Projects
Exhibition at Ortega y Gasset Projects produced in collaboration with the Minor Aesthetics Lab and presents the following exhibition: Sensory Riffs & Visceral Turns: From Syllable to Sound to Print. The exhibition, curated by Dusty Childers, will take place from December 18- December 22, 2024, with an opening reception on Wednesday, 12/18, from 6-9PM, with a live performance and artist talk beginning at 7:30PM.
SENSORY RIFFS & VISCERAL TURNS: FROM SYLLABLE TO SOUND TO PRINT is a commemoration of queer friendship, political solidarity, mourning, and the merging of forms through abstract art and experimental writing. This exhibition describes what it means to be viscerally touched and turned over by words.
Following PS Alum Sandra Ruiz’s (M.A. '02, Ph.D. '11) Left Turn in Brown Study’s directive to turn into new anti-colonial ways of study, abstract painter, Daniel Hughes Noriega Vernola, takes the poetry and poetics of Ruiz and riffs sensorially by crafting 51 monoprints into visual scores. Each print is abstracted according to the embodiment of the spirit of each poem, lyrical essay, or vignette. Vernola engages intuitive listening, and then visually translates from a disordered but ordered sentimentality into performative monoprints.
The monoprints and scores were created over months during an incubation session between writer and artist and in conversation with altars to the spirits of the poems assembled by curator Dusty Childers. On opening night, movement artist Estado Flotante will activate the space, performing a sight-specific soundscape crafted by electronic composer Erica Gressman.
BIOS:
Daniel Hughes Noriega Vernola is a painter who lives and works in New York City and Amagansett, Long Island. A state and city certified arts educator, he has taught PreKindergarten through 8th grade regular and special needs groups for 24 years. He is a member of the Art Students League and maintains a studio out east. Painting abstract, Vernola's work plays with a viewer's eye upon the surface through a language of pure form. Subject matter ranges predominantly from the experiences of light in Manhattan and the east end of Long Island- not for its representational aspect but as a theoretical point of departure-toward energy. He employs a traditional craft of oil painting in abstraction. Working in layered glazes which heighten hue, soften plane, and bring a viewer toward 'felt color', Vernola's work has an optically vibrant feel.
Sandra Ruiz is a performance studies, minoritarian aesthetics, and relational ethnic studies scholar as well as a curator, producer, and poet, and currently serves as the Sue Divan Associate Professor of Performance Studies in Theatre and English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Ruiz is the author of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance, Left Turns in Brown Study and Tears for Tears: Aesthetics in Grief Minor. A longtime collaborator across sites and projects, Ruiz is the co-author with Hypatia Vourloumis of Formless Formation: Vignettes for the End of the World & The Alleys: Just Dropped in to see What Condition My Condition Was In and co-editor with Uri McMillan & Shane Vogel of the book series Minoritarian Aesthetics (NYU Press) and the creator and producer of La Estación Gallery, and the Minor Aesthetics Lab.
Dusty Childers is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator who has worn the chapeaus of director, producer, dramaturgist, costumer, and stylist. Dusty’s body and body of work has graced the likes of The Guggenheim, St. Ann's, The Whitney, BAM, Parsons, Joe’s Pub, Pratt, Sundance, SXSW, Signature Theater, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Town Hall, Abrons Art Center, NY Live Arts, Wild Project, Dixon Place, Irving Plaza, SoHo Rep,Sony Music Hall, Bushwig, Judson Memorial Church. He has worked with Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond, Ari Shapiro, Christeene, Penny Arcade, Machine Dazzle, Nayland Blake, Karen Finley & Miguel Gutierrez (among others).
Estado Flotante is an artist based in Brooklyn whose practice ranges from dance/movement to music/sound, and video/visual composition consolidated through his pop music and live performance. Originally from Santiago de Chile where he became dancer, teaching artist and maker, he moves to New York City in 2012 where he has performed and collaborated with various Dance and performance artists like Antonio Ramos, Miguel Gutierrez, Daria Fain, Ishmael Houston Jones and John Kelly among others. Currently he has been releasing his first singles online, and producing his first EP to be released on all streaming platforms while cultivating his performance practice for more shows to come.
Erica Gressman is a Miami-born, mixed Latinx queer artist working in Chicago who fuses sound art with performance. She received her BA from New College of Florida and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Performance in 2012. After Gressman received her MFA, she has worked as a Design Engineer and now has her own fabrication business, Rainbolt Productions, building architectural sculptures. These experiences have greatly influenced the heavy interactive structures that function as the sets for her compositions.
Ortega y Gassett came together as an artist-run space in April 2013 when a group of artists realized how much their practices were dictated by their circumstances. José Ortega y Gasset’s famous maxim “yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” (I’m myself and my circumstance) deeply resonated with the group, so they named the space as a nod to the philosopher’s pragmatism and realist phenomenology, that came to be known as the “philosophy of life.” Ortega y Gasset Projects celebrates 11 years in May, 2024. OyG is entirely run by working artists, who recognize that exploration is key to artistic vitality. We embrace an exploratory model where artists take the role of curator, critic and promoter. Working without concern for commercial profit or an explicit curatorial ideology, the goal of OyG is to mount exhibitions that support under represented, marginalized artists and emerging artists, provoke dialogue and bolster artistic community. In doing so, we participate within a wider forum to disseminate aesthetic experience and expand our roles, priorities and scope of influence within art culture.