Sunrise

Daniel Barragán, Sabrina Mendoza Malavé, Nicole Mouriño, Ryan Oskin, Lamar Robillard, Camille Rouzaud

Sunrise levitates on the horizon of steel and concrete. Birdsong mixes with jackhammers, traffic, and the cattle calls of the crossing guards who shepherd us to work, or home after a long night out. Tumbleweeds of trash and construction debris dot the landscape, as we gallop through Busy Town in search of a watering hole.

This is the Wild West of The City. The word “development” can be many things — real estate development, character development, the work of culture pioneers, or the manifest destiny towards the city – spurred by our devotion to building, destroying, dancing, collecting, and connecting.

Each of the works in this exhibition point to the hot topography of the land of the Urban Cowboy – the city as Grand Canyon, channelling us all into the steamy environment we find ourselves together in right now.

Daniel Barragán shows paintings highlighting a Hollywood-influenced cross-border symbolism, and Puebloan-style ceramics featuring rock bands including Queens, NY’s thrash metal band, Antrhax. Camille Rouzaud’s bike and metal pipe sculptures remind us of the literal Metal 🤘infrastructure that keeps us alive, and constrains us. Ryan Oskin’s monumental sculpture, and urban geometric wall compositions remind us that while we claim biblical free will, we are surrounded and knocked around by real estate developers’ renderings turned reality. Lamar Robillard’s video utilizes familiar symbols to point toward the visibility and spirituality of Black material culture in America. Nicole Mouriño’s large-format paintings and Sabrina Mendoza Malavé’s intimate wall sculptures both make work exalting the texture of the urban storefront - the facades, windows, and ground floor spaces (like the one you are currently in) that color our very personal worlds, and the worlds of our neighbors.