Scaramouche is pleased to present LUSH LIFE, an exhibition curated by Franklin Evans and Omar Lopez-Chahoud which takes place at nine Lower East Side (LES) galleries: Collette Blanchard Gallery, Eleven Rivington, Invisible-Exports, Lehmann Maupin, On Stellar Rays, Salon 94, Scaramouche, Sue Scott Gallery, and Y Gallery. LUSH LIFE adopts Richard Price’s 2008 novel to title and organize the exhibition. The novel is set in the contemporary LES and through a murder investigation exposes the dynamically changing community of the neighborhood, which despite its evolution retains a ghostly and vital link to its layered past. The deep and varied history of the LES now includes the LES galleries as new community members, and Price’s novel provides a potent vehicle for the consideration of community as voices compete for, ignore and occasionally share the same physical and conceptual space.

The galleries will host concurrent exhibitions with each exhibition reflecting the idea of one of the nine chapters in the book. The curators selected one artist from each gallery to participate in the exhibition and solicited from each of them one additional artist recommendation of an artist not from one of the nine participating galleries (nine total recommendations). The curators then supplemented this base group of eighteen artists to complete nine exhibitions, ranging in size from three to twelve artists. LUSH LIFE will be the present for what will become a living ghost to the future form into which the LES will inevitably morph.

“17 Plus 25 Is 32” is about the opaque and the transparent nature of reading information systems of all scales. For example, the subtraction for good behavior in prison is both expected by the system yet not directly inscribed in the sentencing, thus 17 + 25 = 32, rather than 42. Melissa Gordon’s painting framed at a specific angle by a sculpture of windows to the painting offer multiple equations to consider the wall piece. Karina Aguilera Skvirsky’s reconsidered photographs of her childhood present systems of cataloguing where presence and absence function as agent. Jayson Keeling’s work further considers this investigation of logical systems. Paul Pagk’s ongoing lexicon paintings suggest a derived language that hovers toward the unreadable. Similarly, Tommy Hartung’s camera offers a form that may or may not act upon its suggested function. In addition to this illogical logic consideration, Yashua Klos’ drawing/letter collaboration with a prisoner illustrates the imminent transition of the shooter in the novel from the LES to prison.