DODGEgallery is pleased to present THIS IS THEN, an exhibition of four artists: Nicole Cherubini, Darren Blackstone Foote, Gudmundur Thoroddsen, and Johannes VanDerBeek.

The works in the show appropriate a visual and material symbology that appears ancient, or culled from the past, while exposing their current vocabulary and materiality. Figuration is central to the works whether referencing or relating to the body directly or through abstraction, inspiring both intimacy and universality. The works imitate the old with the new, giving an dislocated historic value to objects that are of the present moment, collapsing time, and inviting the viewer to looking back on now.

Cherubini presents Baby Blue a large porcelain and earthenware urn, pinched and molded with thumbprint-like textures, creating a repeated decorative patterning encircling the chest-high vessel. Pushed into and held up by the side of the vase is a framed, flattened image of a shattered form, its pieces gathered to suggest an unassembled whole. The standing terracotta vase presented on a pedestal and the broken forms within the adjoining frame borrow an ancient language, assuming the forms of objects restored. Yet they also appear to be in the unmarred condition of something entirely new.

Foote presents floor pieces that tow the line between natural history museum artifacts and science fiction. Casting tree roots and his own body, Foote morphs mother nature and human form creating hybrid objects that in their bare condition appear as if they have been unearthed. Fragments of a lost time, these forms are void of natural color, and take on the character of bone fragments preserved and exposed. They seem both tethered to the past and intimately conjoined with the present.

Thoroddsen presents a roughly carved wooden head with a contemporary diamond shaped patterning covering the majority of the shape, save the nose and blank eyes set under shaded brows. The stiff form emits a powerful, ancient presence as if paying homage to a god, or rectifying a significant unknown figure. The object itself looks unearthed, as do the small, crude forms sculpted from shit with gold accents, all invented artifacts that have been organized, categorized, and presented. Shitting Fathers, two ink drawings of squatting Sumerian statues demystify heritage and desegregate time with the reality of basic bodily function.

VanDerBeek presents, Sky Mouth, an assembled, seemingly flimsy mask-like form made from wire and paper that is set within a similarly painted bright blue frame. This “head” sits on an incongruously slick, tall narrow pedestal. The scale of the entire form roughly mirrors a human figure and conjures a totem with its compartmentalized forms and native American-esque name. From afar the materials appear sturdy and authentic, but at closer look they collapse into scraps of found material- a magazine tearing, spray-painted bent wire, and roughly cut metal gauze. By contrast, the customized black pedestal appears like museum staging of a precious, dimly illuminated artifact.