Vadis Turner

Geary is pleased to present Cups and Grids, a solo exhibition by Vadis Turner. In Turner’s new work, largely produced within the last six months, a conversation between disparate forces: austerity and vulnerability, weight and flight, structures and unruliness, is considered. This body of work evolved from a dual interest in Brutalist Architecture and the biology/behavior of moths. An architectural dialogue, as told by materials like concrete and insulation emerges with a boundless energy in moments throughout the exhibition, but with with questions of fragility and meekness- a leather hide grid drawn in space drapes onto a concrete substrate; a pair of cups composed of concrete and lined with cherry-red bedsheet fragments; charred wood vessels with textiles suspended in decomposition.

Turner considers formal relationships of domestic spaces with a gendered history of hierarchy, challenging and exploding this binary facade: the rigidity of the grids and the potential fullness of the vessel depend on each other. Only when the grids melt into limp linear systems can the cups realize their potential to transgress their vesselness.

Cups and grids emerge and fade, and become each other through the work that Turner presents on the walls and in space.

Vadis Turner received a BFA and MFA from Boston University. She was awarded the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2016. Her first solo museum exhibition, Tempest, was at the Frist Art Museum in 2017. Turner’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 21C Hotel & Museum, Hunter Museum of American Art, Tennessee State Museum, Kentucky Arts and Crafts Museum and the Egon Schiele Art Centrum. Selected group exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN and Cheekwood Museum, Nashville, TN. She has been an artist in residence at the Museum of Arts & Design, NYC and Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. Turner recently completed a residency at Hambidge Center, GA and has a Fellowship residency at Vermont Studio Center, VT in 2021. Selected press features include The New York Times, Wallpaper Magazine, Elle Magazine, Vanityfair online, Observer, Artnet and White Hot Magazine. Vadis Turner is represented by Geary and Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, TN.