The Air

Jesus Benavente

Jo Shane

Sam Branden

The Air is an exhibition of three artists whose works address the friction between safety, celebration, and danger. Through flashing video and pop-like text, the manipulation of pre-existing objects, such as an interior escape ladder and child’s blankets, and large-scale, dark and quilt-like tapestries — these artists highlight how graphic forms, optics, and surveillance can create both a sense of warning, and stylized security. This exhibition’s situation within a nightlife venue is appropriate — as it is this tension between fragile notions of uncertainty and festivity, that often keeps us chasing the space along a blurry border between public and private.

Jesus Benavente is interested in parties as celebratory events that mark transitional stages in life — while also showing the sadness and loss for what preceded those celebrations. In Benavente’s video on view, party lights are replaced by flashing police sirens, dance songs are intercut with anti-protest sound cannons, and singalongs become protest chants. Dancing — be it in the streets, or in the club, is an emancipatory means of survival. It is finding happiness in a period of political transition and upheaval. Jesus Benavente holds an MFA from Rutgers University, a BFA from The University of Texas, and has attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, as well as Art Omi. Recent exhibitions include a performance at The Whitney Museum of Art, The Queens International, Perimeter Gallery in Belfast, The Forward Union Fair, and many others.

Jo Shane’s work is an amalgam of found, archived and manipulated objects that reference safety, sustainability, nurturing and consumption, through both a personal and political lens — aiming to elicit a visceral and discursive response. Jo Shane has shown widely nationally and internationally, including a recent solo exhibition at 11 W 30th Projects in New York, and group exhibitions at Milk Gallery and BHQFU in New York, Franklin Parrasch Gallery New York, The Pera Museum in Istanbul, The Centro de Arte de Sevilla in Sevilla, Spain, and White Columns in New York.

Sam Branden’s works are conglomerates of materials that hold a multitude of prior functions and identities. Through a process of collecting, dismembering, and hand-sewing, his pieces emerge into large-scale graphic textile collages. Branden’s homes, including his current environment in New York City, and his childhood home in Northeast Ohio, greatly impact the aesthetics and sensitivities present in his works. Sam Branden holds a BFA from The Columbus College of Art & Design, and has exhibited nationally, including a solo show at Quality Gallery in Oakland, and shows at No Place Gallery in Columbus, and Space Heater Gallery in New York, Scott Charmin Gallery in Houston, among others.