Light Whispers, Part II

Ánima Correa Taína Cruz, Devin Kyle Cuthbertson, Isaiah Davis, Nathaniel Oliver, Andrew Ross, Sam Vernon

Housing is pleased to present Light Whispers, Part II.

A group of rats and pigeons circle around a glowing manhole: what special knowledge does the sewer hold for those creatures? What whispered secrets are revealed when we illuminate that which is typically obscured and hidden away? What veiled truths come to light when we explore that which dwells in darkness and profanity?

The paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and videos featured in Light Whispers—like the image described above, a drawing by Taína Cruz—will take up these difficult questions, conjuring an investigation into the dichotomy of light and shadow. The show is in part inspired by the life and work of the Renaissance painter Caravaggio, especially his radical use of chiaroscuro, an artistic technique in which a dramatic contrast between light and dark is employed to create depth and volume. Caravaggio pushed the limits of this method, expressing crucial moments of struggle, death, and torture against shadowy backdrops, illuminated only by jarring shafts of bright light. Despite his significant acclaim as an artistic genius, however, Caravaggio’s legacy was fraught with hushed rumors of mental instability, disfiguration, and violent tendencies. Thus, the name of the exhibition, Light Whispers, takes on another meaning—one that explores the duality of light and dark not just formally, but thematically as well. On one hand, the artists in this show will employ the practice of chiaroscuro in their work visually. On the other hand, the pieces in this exhibition will take on troublesome, raw, or otherwise unremarked upon subjects with profound clarity.

Ánima Correa is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Her paintings, sculptures, installations, and texts mine the institution of extractivism through the lens of South American geopolitics, culture, and mythology. She has exhibited at Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York, NY; 67 Ludlow, New York, NY; Kimberly Klark, Queens, NY; Callao Monumental, Lima, PE, among others, as well as through several off-site and site-specific exhibitions in Colorado, New York, and Mexico City. She has participated in panels and lectures at El Museo de la Nación, Lima, PE, and MoMA PS1, Queens, NY. Correa received her BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons the New School for Design and a BA in Urban Studies from Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. She is a co-founder of project space AMO Studios, which operated from 2011-2014 in New York, NY.

Taína Cruz is an archivist, artist, and researcher based in New York, United States of America. Spanning 3D rendering, painting, and video, her work focuses on contemporary relations with Indigineous American and West African material, ritual, and visual culture, Recent exhibitions include Embajada’s 5th Anniversary Exhibition: documento, San Juan; A Gathering, Housing, New York; Decameron 7 at New Release Gallery, online; a ribbon, a pearl, a sedimentary rock at The Gormley Gallery, Baltimore. Cruz also received the GO-A: Goya Opportunity Award, San Juan, Puerto Rico and was featured on the MICA Dean’s List 2016-2020, Baltimore.

Devin Kyle Cuthbertson (b. 1984, New York) is an artist currently residing in New York City. He received his BFA from Cooper Union. Devin has lived and worked in many other places, including Los Angeles; Richmond, VA; and Florida, respectively. Having a background in music and performance, he has worked and collaborated with Mykki Blanco, Yves Tumor, Cities Aviv, and other artists from Black alternative music spheres. Devin is now focusing his attention on visual modes of expression with painting being his primary vehicle. His current work uses imprisonment as its subject matter and explores the ways in which technology functions to allow incarcerated bodies to both be seen and interact with society, despite being marked as contraband, illegal, and forbidden.

Isaiah Davis (b. 1992, Bronx, New York) is an artist living and working in New York City. He received a BFA from Cooper Union School of Art in 2018, and has participated in group exhibitions at 128 Avenue C, New York and Love Gallery, New York. Davis’s first New York solo show, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, went up at Participant Inc. in 2021.

Nathaniel Oliver (b. 1996, Washington, DC) is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York City. His practice in painting, sculpture, performance, video, and installations focuses on veracity not being absolute. Guided by perspective, he challenges the normality of the world in which we live. In this digital world, fact is manipulated and cropped to its beneficiary. Conversely, veracity both builds and dismantles spaces. His works reflect the literal and metaphorical experiences that he has come to comprehend and the attestation of him being there.

Sam Vernon is a visual artist who earned her MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University. Her installations combine Xeroxed drawings, photographs, paintings, and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative and identity. Recent solo exhibitions at venues including San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora; UT Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, Tennessee; G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto; and Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park. Her work has been part of groups exhibitions at, among other institutions, California African American Museum; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Barney Savage Gallery and The Cooper Union, New York; Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco; We Buy Gold, Brooklyn; Brooklyn Museum; Queens Museum; and the Drawing Room, London. Honors received include San Francisco Artadia Awards finalist; Sally and Don Lucas Artists Program (LAP) Visual Arts Fellowship; Artistes en Résidence, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Fountainhead Residency, Miami; Helen Watson Winternitz Award, Yale University; Emma Bee Bernstein Fellowship, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, and A.I.R. Gallery Emerging Arts Fellowship. Collaborative projects include visual art contributor to The Arsonist, a play by Mai Sennaar, at Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Broadside Press, with poets Danez Smith and Nathan McClain; and Black Women Arts for Black Lives Matter, New Museum, New York; and performer, Ganggang: Creative Misunderstandings Series, organized by Alejandro Guzman, Brooklyn Museum. Vernon has been a panelist, moderator, or guest lecturer at, among others, San Francisco State University; University of California, Berkeley; Watkins College of Art, Nashville; Utah State University; Barnard College; Union College; and Voelker Orth Museum, Queens, New York.

Andrew Ross (b. 1989, Miami) lives and works in New York. Ross is an American sculptor working across traditional and new media. His works examine the fraught relationship between objects and images in the digital age. Ross merges a broad range of art, historical, and scientific references into fragmentary constructions that combine figures, objects, and spaces with a nod to the metaphoric associations they elicit. Ross earned his BFA from Cooper Union and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has taught at Bruce High Quality Foundation University. Ross has exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Artists Space, The Drawing Center, Greene Naftali, White Columns, and the Center for the Humanities at CUNY. He has mounted solo shows at Signal Gallery, American Medium, Clima Gallery (Milan), and False Flag. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Mousse Magazine, and Cultured Magazine, among other publications. His first solo show at False Flag was an Artforum Critic’s Pick in 2017. Upcoming exhibitions include a two-person show with Craig Kalpakjian at Kai Matsumiya Fine Art and a solo presentation at Clima Gallery in the fall of 2019.