Subtle Subversions
Ayanna Dozier, Bang Geul Han, Morrison Gong, Africanus Okokon, Demetrius Oliver, Vanessa Gully Santiago, Andrew Paul Woolbright
June 9 – July 15, 2022
Opening Reception Thursday, June 9, 6-8pm
Installation Views
Microscope Gallery is very pleased to present “Subtle Subversions,” a group exhibition of new and recent works by artists Ayanna Dozier, Morrison Gong, Bang Geul Han, Africanus Okokon, Demetrius Oliver, Vanessa Gully Santiago, and Andrew Paul Woolbright.
Although varying widely in terms of artistic medium and approach, the works in painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and mixed-media challenge and defy prevalent customs, societal controls and power structures, through subtle, poetic, and highly personal means. Together, the multi-layered and nuanced works allude to both the harmfulness as well as the absurdity of various entrenched societal, corporate, and governmental norms, policies, and laws — especially those related to privacy, body autonomy, and racial, gender, and sexual discrimination. Furthermore, the works collectively reflect upon the manners in which various technologies are used to monitor activities, sway perceptions, and maintain or alter the status quo.
Bang Geul Han’s sculpture “Threshold” succinctly embodies the complex history of abortion across centuries and cultures. A running stream of leaked US governmental data from 2017-2019 containing gestational details of undocumented minors detained at the southern border — recorded in order to discourage them from undergoing an abortion — plays on LED panels embedded within a wooden structure that resembles a traditional 15th century Korean Hanok. At the time it was believed that “grinding and ingesting the thresholds of three houses would bring enough misfortune to stop an unwanted pregnancy,” Han explains.
Current policing and laws that disproportionately target black women are exposed in Ayanna Dozier’s photographic installation “Solicitations of Crimes Against Nature.” A quilt composed of 64 Polaroids, stitched together with red thread, portrays the artist performing various actions that the police may interpret as evidence to charge black femmes who are walking alone with the crime of solicitation of sex. A boombox plays audio of Dozier reading the relevant laws from the five states that prohibit solicitation: California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas.
Grey-scale acrylic on canvas paintings by Vanessa Gully Santiago “Managing Assistant” and “Performance Review” address gender discrimination, alienation, and power imbalance in the corporate workplace. Each work features a large portrait of a woman professional surrounded by small, floating and superimposed scenes depicting her everyday experiences at the office such as the extra tasks she takes on, the criticism she receives, the promotions she is denied, or the verbal and sexual aggressions she endures, unlike her counterparts in the male-dominated culture.
Colonialism and cultural gentrification are the undertones of Africanus Okokon’s silkscreen on canvas diptych “The Exterminating Angel” (2022) — a titled borrowed from Luis Buñuel 1962 surrealist film in which guests at a party in a luxurious mansion find themselves trapped. Okokon fuses two advertisements from the back cover of 1977 Nigerian arts festival publication into a single image. A Coca-Cola ad with a couple dressed casually in sportswear sits above an ad for soap by the British brand The Imperial Leather featuring a couple in formal attire, which has been rotated 180 degrees so that the torsos of both couples connect. The image, with slight color variations, appears on both sides of the diptych. The subdued hues create the appearance of fading caused by exposure to sunlight over time.
Andrew Paul Woolbright’s large scale oil and acrylic on canvas painting ”The Opal Sandcastle Ghost Bites the Misericorde” considers “the utopic promise of nascent virtual spaces.” Intertwining historical, literary, and technological references in his imagery — such as Joos van Cleve’s painting “The Suicide of Lucretia” (152–25), illustrations by William Blake, Palmer Luckey’s defense tech startup “Anduril,” an oculus rift, and a 3D-modeled head of John Berger — Woolbright points to the ways the exorbitant wealth of tech companies and their founders unduly influence our lives and futures.
Two new photographic portraits, shot on 35mm film and titled “欲上青天揽明月 / If I so desire, the moon is at my fingertips“ and “明朝散发弄扁舟 / When the world can’t give me answers, I will sail away with my boat,” by Morrison Gong rebel against racial and gender stereotypes. In each, a friend of the artist is posing defiantly and unclothed in a natural setting suggestive of both traditional Chinese landscapes and pinup calendars — a golden field and a still lake with a swan. The titles of the photos are lines from a poem by Li Bai (李白), the widely celebrated poet of the Tang Dynasty, that expresses the desire for ultimate freedom.
Demetrius Oliver’s medium-sized sculpture “Coruscate” (2021), which consists of an open suitcase filled with rocks of shiny, black coal and incandescent light bulbs, can be seen to allude to the tensions among humans on this planet, and our efforts to control and exploit nature. Reminding us of the impermanence of our existence, Oliver’s work seems to ask us to consider human history and its chosen path within the context of the wider universe.
Subtle Subversions opens on Thursday June 9 and continues through Friday July 15. Opening Reception: Thursday June 9, 6-8pm. Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 -6pm. Please note that masks are required at this time.
For inquiries or high res images please contact the gallery at inquiries@microscopegallery.com or by telephone at 347.925.1433.
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Ayanna Dozier (PhD) is a Brooklyn-based artist-writer. Her art practice centers film (both motion picture and still), performance, and installation work with a specific concentration on conceptual and feminist practices. She is the author of Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope (2020). Her films have been screened at the selected festivals; Open City Docs (2020), BlackStar (2021), Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (2021), Prismatic Ground (2022) and Aesthetic Film Festival where she was the recipient of Best Experimental in 2020 for her film Softer. She was a 2022 Wave Hill Winter Workspace Resident, a 2018-2019 Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Studies Program, and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow from 2017-2022 at Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work has been exhibited at The Shed, Westbeth Gallery, and the Block Museum amongst other venues. She is currently working on the manuscript of the life and work of abstract film and visual artist, Camille Billops.
Morrison Gong (b. 1997, Shenzhen, China) uses photography, video and performance to extract the erotic force rooted in myth, origin, subversion and animality. Their works have been shown at alternative venues such as Elsewhere and C’mon Everybody in New York, as well as Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, the Filmmakers Cooperatives, CROSSROADS presented by San Francisco Cinematheque, Manhattan Independent Film Festival, Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, among others. They are based in Brooklyn, NY.
Bang Geul Han is an interdisciplinary artist working across video, performance, text, and code. Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, her work has been shown in venues including A.I.R. Gallery, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Cuchifritos Gallery, DOOSAN Gallery New York, NURTUREart, and Queens Museum in New York City, Galerie Les Territories and Projét Pangée in Montreal, and Centro Internazionale per l’Arte Contemporanea in Rome. Han is the recipient of a number of artist residencies and fellowships including The Block Gallery Artist Residency and the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace program, A.I.R. Fellowship, MacDowell Fellowship, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, PA. Han received her MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from NYSCC at Alfred University, Alfred NY and BFA in Painting from Seoul National University in Korea. She lives and works in New York City.
Africanus Okokon (b. 1989) works with the moving image, performance, painting, assemblage, collage, sound, and installation to explore the dialectics of forgetting and remembrance in relation to cultural, shared, and personal mediated histories. He received a BFA in Film/Animation/Video from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013 and an MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2020, where he was a recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship. Okokon has performed, screened, and shown work in international venues including the Ottawa Animation Film Festival, the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, the BlackStar Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chale Wote Street Art Festival, the International Print Center in New York, Perrotin Gallery, Pioneer Works, and The Kitchen. Okokon was a 2020 Artist-in-Resident at Artspace New Haven, and is currently a 2021–-2022 Studio Fellow at NXTHVN in New Haven, Connecticut. His work has been featured in publications such as The Yale Review, New American Paintings, PopMatters, and the Wire: Adventures in Sound and Music. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Film/Animation/Video at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and is based in New Haven, Connecticut.
Demetrius Oliver received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at the Print Center, Henry Art Gallery, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; High Line, Inman Gallery, Klaus von Nichtssagend, D’Amelio Terras, and P.S. 1/MoMA. Group exhibitions include MASS MoCA, The Renaissance Society, The Studio Museum of Harlem, Marian Boesky Gallery, Roberts & Tilton, Acme, and Sotheby’s S|2 gallery.
Vanessa Gully Santiago (b. 1984, Boston, MA) lives and works in Queens, New York. Solo exhibitions include Young Professional at James Fuentes (2020), No Touch at Thierry Goldberg (2017) and Private Accounts at American Medium (2016). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Mrs. Gallery, Rachel Uffner Gallery, Helena Anrather Gallery, JTT Gallery, Marinaro Gallery, and Foxy Production (all in New York), Rosenwald Wolf Gallery in Philadelphia, C. Grimaldis Projects in Baltimore, and Smart Objects in Los Angeles, among others. Her work has been written about in ArtForum, Forbes, and Hyperallergic. In 2006 she received her BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art where she was the recipient of the Michael S. Vivo Award for Excellence in Drawing and in 2013 she earned her MFA from Mason Gross School of Art, Rutgers University, where she was awarded the Paul Robeson Emerging Young Artist Award. She has attended residencies at Byrdcliffe Art Colony and Vermont Studio Center.
Andrew Paul Woolbright (American) lives in Brooklyn, NY and is an MFA graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Woolbright is currently a resident at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program and has recently exhibited with The Hole, New York (2021); Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris (2021); Zurcher Gallery, New York (2020); and Ada Gallery, Richmond (2020) and is currently preparing work for an exhibit with Hesse Flatow this summer. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, TimeOut New York, Brooklyn Magazine, ArtViewer, Two Coats of Paint, the Boston Globe, and the Chicago Reader, and his work is currently in the collection of the RISD Museum. Woolbright runs Below Grand gallery on the Lower East Side and has curated extensively, including a survey show of Kathy Goodell’s work at the Dorsky Museum.In addition to exhibiting, he is a critic and contributing writer for The Brooklyn Rail and currently teaches at The School of Visual Arts in New York.
