Wendy Let Me In

Rose Nestler

Natalie Baxter

Sam Chun

Franklin Cain-Borgers

Throughout their various media, these artists use humor and exaggerated forms to address ways in which symbology attempts to transcend a sort of spirituality and patriotic nostalgia. However, these poetic attempts are often consumed by the very theater that they seek to challenge. It is inside of this interrupted symbology, that these artists' works are able to joke with, and surprise us.

Rose Nestler is an interdisciplinary artist focusing in sculpture and video. She received her MFA degree from Brooklyn College in 2017 where she was a Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship nominee and a Graduate Teaching Fellow. Her work has been exhibited at a variety of galleries including, Underdonk, Smack Mellon, Crush Curatorial, and Cuchifritos Gallery and Project Space. Most recently she exhibited work at L.O.G. in Chapel Hill, NC and Beverly’s Pop-Up at Good Weather Gallery in Little Rock, AK. In January 2018 she had her first solo show at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, NY. Nestler has been an artist-in-residence at Chashama Workspace Program, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and Byrdcliffe Artists Colony.

Natalie Baxter received her MFA from the University of Kentucky in 2012 and her BA in Fine Art from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN in 2007. Baxter’s recent work uses sewing and quilting techniques learned from her grandmother to create soft sculptures that playfully push controversial political issues. Her work has been exhibited recently at Sears-Peyton Gallery and Mulherin Gallery in New York, Purdue University, Yale University, Spring/Break art fair, Aa Collections in Vienna, Schaufenster Gallery in Berlin and has been featured in The New York Times, Vice, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, and The Guardian. Baxter has been an artist in residence at The Wassaic Project, a fellowship recipient at the Vermont Studio Center and a Queens Arts Fund grant recipient. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Sam Chun received his BFA from The Cooper Union. Sam Chun’s work is on view concurrently at The Abrons Art Center. Although born and raised in the states, Chun experienced a cultural metamorphosis after he moved to NYC. His work is evidence of this metamorphosis. His upbringing as a Korean American caused him to research Korean Neo-Confucianism in order to have a better understanding of not just where he comes from but why. Chun’s work explores cultural displacement via viewer participation / artwork interaction, and aspects of Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianists believed the Yin and Yang (The Supreme Ultimate) to be a singular entity which did not exist in dualistic way, like the western perspective will have you believe. Yin and Yang exist as a singularity. Equals yet opposite, and never functioning separately.

Franklin Cain-Borgers received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio, and is currently working towards his MFA at The School of Visual Arts. He has done projects in collaboration with Roy G Biv Gallery, Columbus, Mint Collective, Columbus, and Skylab Gallery, Columbus. His multi-media work seeks to express the multiplicity of our subjective social experience. Sitting within a certain refusal that plays directly with capitalist value and social systems, Franklin’s work invokes an incoherence of personal and collective history, that disrupts the indexical nature of these systems.