Assembled Overtime

William Eric Brown Jennifer Dalton Rodney Durso Hanna Washburn

Curated by Emily Markert

These four artists, while diverse in their practices, share a dedication to durational modes of artmaking. Born from extended periods of research and meticulous material investigations, their works reconcile with the passage of time in striking ways. Brown, for instance, layers charcoal and paint onto his father's photographs of Antarctica in the 1960s in his "ATKA" series, creating a poignant dialogue across generations while inadvertently raising questions about climate change. Dalton's work, by contrast, interweaves the personal and the political. Her accordion book, "Feel My City Breaking & Everybody Shaking" (2021), intimately documents her experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, while "Pillar of Debt" (2023) confronts the insidious nature of consumerism with bricks formed from years of accumulated credit card solicitations.

Durso, with his background in graphic design, constructs dynamic collages by coupling images and text culled from magazines and newspapers with bold, painted lines and shapes. Spanning nearly two decades, his works in the exhibition reveal a sustained exploration of color, form, and socio-political commentary. Meanwhile, Washburn's hand-stitched textile sculptures offer a sense of warmth and connection. Crafted from found fabrics imbued with personal histories, these uncanny works embody human gestures and suggest the potential for empathy and resilience.

Sited in the West Chelsea Building, a storied home to artists’ studios and galleries which currently faces an uncertain future, Assembled Overtime also recognizes and celebrates the creative energy that has made West Chelsea a vital part of Manhattan’s cultural landscape. In this way, the exhibition itself becomes a meditation on time—layered, interwoven, and ultimately, shared.

Against the backdrop of the venue's uncertain fate and other unignorable crises that characterize our current moment, the political dimensions of these nuanced works emerge. Through their engagement with found materials and personal narratives, these artists offer ways to relate to the past, the present, and to each other. The time to assemble is now.

William Eric Brown lives and works in New York City. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1969. He received a BFA from the University of Southern Maine in 1992, and an MFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1996. Brown is multifaceted in his practice, making paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installation work. Brown has also produced a large body of artists’ books, including A Sentence for the Sun, with text by Tom Melick, published by Stolon Press, Sydney in 2022. Recent and notable solo and group exhibitions of Brown’s work include, ATKA at Arts Center at Duck Creek (East Hampton, NY) in July 2023; ColorStatic at the National Arts Club (New York, NY) in 2021; Tiptoeing Through the kitchen: Recent Photography at Luhring Augustine (New York, NY) in April 2024; Sequences: Ode to Minor White, Brattleboro Museum of Art (Brattleboro, VT) in 2021; Everyday Animals at Ulterior Gallery (New York, NY) in 2019. Brown’s work is included in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, and numerous private collections.

Jennifer Dalton’s installations, drawings and sculptures often aim to make time visible. She collects, organizes, and evaluates cultural information according to her own personal criteria, choosing subjects to test a hypothesis or to dissect a chip on her own shoulder. The results of her inquiries have been displayed as accordion books, photographic grids, hand-drawn charts, customized gumball machines, candies, bracelets, figurines, and other materials. In recent years, Dalton’s work has been exhibited at venues including the Brooklyn Museum, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Wellin Museum of Art, the Museum of Capitalism, Flag Art Foundation, and Museum Brandhorst. Past awards and residencies include Pollock Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, MacDowell, Smack Mellon, and La Napoule. Dalton holds a BA in Fine Art from UCLA and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Dalton is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Rodney Durso is a graphic designer, artist, educator and founder of ArtBridge, a nonprofit arts organization based in New York, NY that gives emerging artists unprecedented exposure, exhibiting their work on construction scaffolding. As an artist, Durso has worked extensively since 2005, producing hundreds of drawings, paintings, collages, and photographs. His work is grounded in a strong sense of graphic organization, orientation, color, type and imagery that reflects his previous work as a designer. Durso has attended artist residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Deer Island, Maine), Penland (Spruce Pine, NC), Anderson Ranch (Aspen, CO) and the American Academy in Rome (Rome, Italy) In 2020, Durso launched DursoCreative, a design studio that conceptualizes and creates brand and design projects for small to midsize organizations in the New York City area. He is currently based between New York, NY and Brookfield, CT.

Hanna Washburn is an artist and curator based in Beacon, NY. Washburn’s work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Cult Bytes, and the Femme Art Review. Her work has been shown at venues including Spring/Break Art Fair (New York, NY), the Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY), NADA Art Fair (New York, NY), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute (Utica, NY), Sotheby’s Institute of Art (New York, NY), and Rice University (Houston, TX). She has held artist residences at Haystack Mountain School (2023), Monson Arts (2020), and Vermont Studio Center (2019), among others. Washburn received her MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 2018, and her BA in Fine Art and English Literature from Kenyon College in 2014. She also works in the Curatorial Department of Storm King Art Center.

Emily Markert is a curator, writer, and editor from and based in New York. She has worked at institutions such as the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco) and The Jewish Museum (New York) and curated site-responsive projects in San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Madrid. She is currently part of the curatorial team at Dia Art Foundation (New York/Beacon). Markert has also edited and contributed to numerous publications; recent projects include Imagining the Future Museum: 21 Dialogues with Architects (managing editor; 2022) and Steve McQueen: Bass (co-editor; 2024). She holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts.