CARRIAGE
Jovencio de la Paz,
Dru Donovan,
André Magaña, Derek Franklin, Tabitha Nikolai,
Jess Perlitz, and Sarah Wertzberger
Vacation NYC
24A Orchard St, New York City
September 6 – 28, 2019
Opening: Friday, Sept. 6, 6 – 8 pm
HOLDING Contemporary, an experimental gallery based in Portland, Oregon, presents CARRIAGE at Vacation NYC on 24A Orchard Street in New York from September 6 – 28, 2019. CARRIAGE features the works of Jovencio de la Paz, Dru Donovan, André Magaña, Derek Franklin, Tabitha Nikolai, Jess Perlitz, and Sarah Wertzberger. There will be an opening reception on Friday, September 6, 2019 from 6 – 8 pm.
CARRIAGE presents artists that represent diverse practices but who each carry new ideas into the world by critiquing systems and challenging narratives. The artists included in the exhibition explore themes surrounding the body, imagined environments, and cultural histories. Each artist navigates personal, political, and societal conflict through unique formal translations of painting, photography, sculpture, textile artworks, and new media.
Founded in 2016 after Trump was elected, HOLDING Contemporary borrows from existing language and structures to challenge systems of power in the art world. A “Shareholder Program” has served as HOLDING Contemporary’s foundation for this investigation, where artists, educators, collectors, and the general public from around the country have invested into the gallery. In addition to receiving quarterly packets with dividends, financial statements, artists’ prints, etc., the Shareholders engage in a regular conversation of what the art world could be.
HOLDING’s partnership with VACATION, who also runs on an alternative gallery model, highlights a shared vision of navigating systems of power and imagining new worlds. Special events include a panel discussion about new gallery models on September 7, an installation by Aesa designer Randi Mates on September 14 co-presented with Bona Drag and a performance by Lu Yim on September 21. Details will be added on our website, and all events are free and open to the public.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jovencio de la Paz works in textile processes such as weaving, dye, and stitch-work. He explores textile works “as they relate to broader concerns of language, histories of colonization, migrancy, ancient technology, and speculative futures.” De la Paz received a MFA in Fibers from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA with an emphasis on Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions at HOLDING Contemporary (Portland, OR), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver, CO), Ditch Projects (Springfield, OR), The Art Gym at Marylhurst (Portland, OR), ThreeWalls (Chicago, IL), The Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, OR); Casey Droege Cultural Productions (Pittsburgh, PA), The Alice (Seattle, WA), Carl & Sloan Contemporary (Portland, OR), 4th Ward Projects (Chicago, IL), SPACE Gallery (Portland, ME), The Sculpture Center (Cleveland, OH), SOIL Gallery (Seattle, WA), Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center (Chicago, IL), The Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Uri Gallery (Seoul, South Korea). He regularly teaches at schools of art, craft, and design throughout the country, such as the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), Ox Bow School of Art (Saugatuck, MI), the Haystack Mountain School of Craft (Deer Isle, ME), and the Arrowmont School of Craft (Gatlinburg, TN). He is a co-founder of the collaborative group Craft Mystery Cult, and he is currently living and working in Eugene, Oregon.
Dru Donovan is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Donovan works in both photography and video to examine the connection between physical and emotional occurrences by constructing or revisiting human experiences. She received her MFA from the Yale School of Art and a BFA from the California College of the Arts. Donovan has exhibited her photography at Brancolini Grimaldi (London, England), Musée de l’Elysée (Lausanne, Switzerland), Rhona Hoffman Gallery (Chicago, IL), Vox Populi Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco, CA), and Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York, NY). Donovan has presented her work in Portland with the solo exhibitions Holding a Fray (HOLDING Contemporary), Basic Poses (Melanie Flood Projects) and Carving The Lung (Hap Gallery). Her photographs have been published in magazines such as Aperture, Blind Spot, Picture, and Matte, and her works are in the collections of Deutsche Bank and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2011, TBW Books published her first book, Lifting Water. In 2011–2012 she participated in the LMCC’s Workspace residency. Donovan is a 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow.
André Magaña makes sculpture that engages Mexican life and identity by re-creating icons from sculpture history, pop culture, and everyday consumer culture. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally; recent solo and two person exhibitions include Prairie (Chicago); Holding Contemporary (Portland, OR); and American Medium (New York). Recent group exhibitions at Hotel Art Pavillion (Brooklyn); Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University (Middletown), and Alyssa Davis Gallery (New York). In the fall, Filipek-Magaña will present 5 new works at Totokaelo (New York).
Derek Franklin is an artist based in Portland, Oregon. He received his BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and his MFA from Rutgers University. Solo exhibitions include G ray Minstrel (Carl and Sloan Contemporary, Portland), M ending Capers (Thierry Goldberg, New York), and Meditation Furniture for Ten Minute Breaks (Document, Chicago) Sitting Around Waiting to Inhale (Anytime Department, Cincinnati). Franklin's works have also been presented in group exhibitions at Thierry Goldberg, Andel31 (Copenhagen), Simone Subal Gallery (New York), and Soloway (New York). Franklin was a partner and director at the artist run space Soloway in Brooklyn, NY from 2012-2016. He currently teaches at the University of Oregon and Pacific Northwest College of Art. Franklin’s work looks toward practices in food, nomadic healing, and labor as forms of healing, and bringing communities together after living in a culture of violence. His work is produced in the aesthetics of repair or the way you might mend things if you did not quite know how.
Tabitha Nikolai is a trashgender gutter elf and low-level cybermage raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, and based in Portland, Oregon. She creates the things that would have better sustained her younger self-simulations of a more livable future, and the obstacles that intervene. These look like: fictive text, video games, cosplay, and earnest rites of suburban occult. Currently she teaches and manages galleries for the Portland State University School of Art + Design. Her work has been shown at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, UT), Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Ganka Gallery (Tokyo, Japan), and HOLDING Contemporary (Portland, OR), and has been covered by i-D Magazine, The New York Times, and Art in America. She hopes you're doing okay.
Jess Perlitz makes work focused on considering landscape and the ways in which we define and seek to recognize ourselves within it. Grappling with how space gets articulated, her projects take many forms—traversing performance, sculpture, and drawing. The work has appeared in a variety of venues such as playgrounds, fields, galleries, and museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA), Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY), Cambridge Galleries (Cambridge, Ontario), and De Fabriek (The Netherlands). Born in Toronto, Canada, Jess is a graduate of Bard College, received her MFA from Tyler School of Art and clown training from the Manitoulin Center for Creation and Performance. Jess is currently based in Portland, Oregon where she is Associate Professor of Art and Head of Sculpture at Lewis & Clark College. Jess was recently named the 2018 Joan Shipley Fellow from the Oregon Arts Commission, a 2019 Hallie Ford Fellow from The Ford Family Foundation, and was an artist in residence in Omaha, NE at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. Her project, Chorus, is currently installed at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA as part of the museum’s ongoing artists installation series.
Sarah Wertzberger is an artist and designer with a multidisciplinary studio practice, working primarily across mediums of weaving, ceramics, and painting. Her weaving practice spans hand, industrial, and digital weaving. Her work touches upon the ideas of play, color interaction, and the tensions that exist at the intersections of art, design, craft, technology, and DIY. Her making processes are playful and provisional, allowing for a responsive way of working that embraces intuition, in which the process of making itself steers the work’s outcomes. Wertzberger received her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited at Field Projects (New York, NY), The Oregon College of Art and Craft (Portland, OR), The Design Center (New York, NY), and has been a resident at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Deer Isle, ME), The Weaving Mill (Chicago, IL), and AZ WEST - Encampment Residency (Joshua Tree, CA). Wertzberger lives and works in Portland, OR.
GALLERY INFORMATION
HOLDING Contemporary Portland, OR presents exhibitions and programs by emerging and established visual artists across disciplines. Through a deliberate curatorial vision and a strategic business model, we position ourselves towards challenging the economical and social privilege of the art world.
VACATION New York, NY is a gallery timeshare that hosts contemporary spaces from around the world on a rotating monthly basis. The gallery fosters global dialogue and diverse programming from its network of international cultural producers, paving a new hybrid model for collaborative exhibition and exchange.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 5 pm
Contact Information:
VACATION (exhibition location)
24A Orchard Street New York, NY
(P) 302 481-6331 | (E) concierge@vacationgallery.nyc | vacationgallery.nyc
HOLDING Contemporary
916 NW Flanders Street, Portland, OR 97209
(P) 503 444-7101 | (E) info@holdingcontemporary.com | holdingcontemporary.com