Graceful Cadaver, Elegant Carcass

Aaron Estrada, Anabel Juárez, Andrew Sexton, Angie Seykora, Ben Noam, Brendan Lynch, Chris Lux, Daniel Paul Schubert & Andrés Cortes, Edward Salas, Elspeth Schulze, Esteban Ramón Pérez, Henrik Munk Soerensen, Johanna Jackson, Lizette Hernández, Malcolm Kenter, Nick Makanna, Patrick Walsh (JPW3), Quintin Atchison, Ryan Flores, Shane Darwent, Sofie Ramos, Tofer Chin, Vincent Pocsik, William Scott, Willy Reed, Yeni Mao

Co-Curated by BBQLA and Maike Nesbit

GGLA is proud to present Graceful Cadaver, Elegant Carcass, co-curated by BBQLA and Mike Nesbit. This marks the second in a series of exhibitions and collaborations that form Ubiquitropolis, a sprawling constellation of shows organized by GGLA, ringing true to the sense of omnipresence referenced in the title.

Housed in an unassuming warehouse located a few blocks from GGLA’s main gallery space, the exhibition invites viewers into a cavernous space containing sculptures. The exhibition title refers to the collaborative drawing game “Exquisite Corpse,” which originated with a group of Surrealist artists in the early 1900s to create impromptu compositions with others. Like this game, Graceful Cadaver Elegant Carcass operates in much of the same way, placing the viewer in a physical setting where they must navigate a series of sculptures, each made by an artist or duo separately, yet combined within space to inform and inflect upon one another, building meaning and narrative through each chance association.

As might be expected, by inviting over 20 artists to contribute to this sculptural show, the diversity in medium, philosophy, and approach is vast, although these differences sometimes give way to staggering moments of harmony and commonality. Unprompted conversations begin to take place between disparate works, such as between Brendan Lynch’s Yankee Two, which features slumping chip bags inverted to reveal their foil liners and then filled with cement, providing humanity and gravitas generally not connected to these disposable containers, and Elspeth Schulze’s Sieve in which perforated sandbags sit half-empty in a pile of their own spilled contents. Similarly, the great number of ceramic works within the exhibition both speak to the ancient longevity of this material and its odd ability to speak to our technological present. Minimal gestures are counterpointed by cacophonous displays of information and materiality, and we’re met with not one but two larger-than-life recreations of animal-based kitsch Americana. Each work within the exhibition is a world within itself, yet placed within the context of one another, deeper meanings are both built and broken, and the viewer is forced to reckon with this unruly and unfurling constellation of limbs, torsos, heads, and legs, all frankensteined together to form the three-dimensional exquisite corpse that is Graceful Cadaver, Elegant Carcass.