Catharine Czudej

My 🖤 is an immersive installation of works by Catharine Czudej at Julia Trading Wholesale, a disused fabric wholesaler in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Convening sculpture, light, upcycled fabric, commercial signage and painting, Czudej stages a sensory environment, fusing the promise of nightlife with infrastructures of commerce, culture and urban real estate. In this exhibition, the artist is invited to make work on the premises using materials from the building, neighborhood and newly demolished upper floors soon to be redeveloped as artist studios.

Occupying the 9,000-sq-ft wholesale floor, Homeowner is a large-scale inflatable castle stitched from disused fabric and vinyl cut from New York billboards. First conceived and exhibited at von ammon in 2020, the sculpture evolves with each successive iteration accumulating a patchwork of new material surfaces and advertising imagery.

This logic of reuse extends to an edition of 500 t-shirts screen-printed by Czudej for My 🖤. Originally produced for Regift, the Swiss Institute’s 40th-anniversary exhibition at Luma Westbau in Zurich, these t-shirts are now printed over with the developer’s promotional text. In exchange for “free use” of the venue, Czudej overlays each t-shirt with “ARTIST STUDIOS HERE / 1182 FLUSHING AVE, BUSHWICK / CATHARINE CZUDEJ” and two heart-shaped QR codes. One directs viewers to Czudej’s new app, Magic, where artists can live rent-free; the other links to the developer’s website, securing the artist a 5% commission for each successful referral.

Advertising and real estate offer a taste of Czudej’s repertoire. Across sculpture, merch and self-branded material, the circulation of art, audience, prospective buyer—or tenant—is difficult to disentangle. Three heart-shaped QR paintings, each 108 × 72 inches, created on salvaged crates and demolition debris link to the exhibition's live stream, converging a self-enlisted cast of Twitch streamers, creators, club-goers and a free-floating art public. Suspended overhead, tangled electrical cords illuminate the works on view and double as phone charging stations, inviting visitors to linger, recharge and stay awake.

In parallel, Drive Thru, a retail turned “very open call” exhibition by Florian Meisenberg d/b/a The Gallery occupies the 900-sq-ft showroom. Artists are invited to bring and install their work on the night of the opening, activating the showroom in real time.

Curated by Anthony Terzino and Florian Meisenberg