Jerry the Marble Faun & Vincent Tiley

"It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from a more complex life form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another-the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter."

—William S. Burroughs

Situations and New Discretions are proud to present, Flesh Becomes Stone, a two-person exhibition of works by Jerry the Marble Faun and Vincent Tiley, at our shared gallery space in Chelsea.

In 2019, researchers at the Kyoto University of Science discovered a nucleocytoplasmic large DNA virus in a Japanese hot spring. The virus was able to harden amoebas into crystal-like cysts, essentially turning them into stone. They designated their discovery, medusavirus.

Bearing the title Medusa, one of Tiley's chimeric stitched and braided leather sculptures rests, its whip-like tentacles extending into the gallery like the ill-fated Gorgon's serpentine hair. As in sister sculptures Worm (made from a raw pig leather that will patinate over time), and Spore (made from Oryx leather studded with rose thorns), Medusa's tapering plaits reach outward as if seeking connection, tapping into the psychological complexities of being touched. Their snaking appendages find a formal kinship in the radial projections of Jerry The Marble Faun's Migration. Carved from a fleshy-toned cranberry alabaster, the spiraling form embodies a spinning wagon wheel, a turtle changing its course, and a gust of wind. For Jerry the Marble Faun, the act of carving is a way of communing with raw material; one has to perceive the stone's characteristics in order to release the form hiding within.

Jerry first began working with stone decades ago, and has since developed an idiosyncratic lexicon that intermixes mythological and art historical references with elements drawn from his own charismatic biography. Through labor, intuition, and time, he excavates mysterious ornaments and creatures out of raw material. Spiraling, staccato chisel marks trace the physical effort required to shape stone, while alluding to rippling breaks in an animal's fur or the chipped surface of an ocean tide, lending his works a sense of vitality all their own. Material becomes a way of connecting the past to the present, as in the sculpture, Legend. Carved from black basalt, it is the same stone as was used in ancient Egypt to create sarcophagi that would last an eternity.

For the last decade, Vincent Tiley has utilized garment-based durational performances to explore how clothing is used as language. Queer individuals use clothing and style to signal who we are to our community. By creating garments and jewelry that fully disguise, restrain, and combine its wearers, Tiley creates new expressions within this language. For this exhibition, Vincent continues to use the strategies of adornment, but enhanced by static objects: leather viruses, a single scrying mirror inhabited by a line of flame, and tattooed cow bones. Inked in blue with watchful eyes, the bones allude to evil eyes and biblical angels while relating to the necromantic practice of “throwing bones” in order to divine predictions and meaning from their positions.

Together, the two artists represent a lineage of material narratives, using opposing but complimentary tactics. Stories held within objects. Thoughts captured in stone. The future as presented in a multi-limbed thorny virus of leather. Both the Marble Faun and Tiley have created contemporary relics, reeking of ancient idolization. The tattooed bones and alabaster shapes set the scene for the next stage.

"I make work about the body and its boundaries," Tiley states. And the Marble Faun turns them to stone.

JERRY THE MARBLE FAUN (b. 1955, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in Queens, NY. He began hand-­carving stone in 1987 and has most recently pursued ceramic sculpture. Jerry held his first exhibition in 2014 at Jackie Klempay Gallery, Brooklyn and has appeared in exhibitions at SITUATIONS, New York; CASTLE, Los Angeles; Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York; Sculpture Center, Queens; 2nd Floor Projects, San Francisco; The Elaine de Kooning House, South Hampton, Geary Contemporary, New York, Bureau of General Services/Queer Division, New York; and Canada, New York; amongst others. In 2017, Jerry participated in the Shandaken Project's residency program at Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY. His work is currently on view in the MoMA PS1 group exhibition, Hard Ground, curated by Jody Graf, through October 2024.

Vincent Tiley (b. 1987, West Virginia, VA) lives and works Brooklyn NY. He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Tiley is a 2024 participant in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Arts Center Residency. In 2023, he participated in the Villa Lena Foundation residency in Tuscany and the Vermont Studio Center Program. In 2017 he participated in the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) and was a 2013 participant at Artist Cooperative Residency and Exhibition (ACRE) program. His work has been featured and reviewed in Paper Magazine, Art in America, the Chicago Tribune, Performa, and the New York Times. The artist has been widely exhibited internationally including the Museum of Art and Design, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, AxeNeo7, CFHILL, and the International Museum of Surgical Science. His works have been collected by the Whitney Library, the Leather Archives and Museum, Yale University Library, and the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.