Artists: John Bent, Calvin Burton, Cooper Holoweski, Ethan Shoshan

Curator: Wayne Northcross

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm

A failed state, in political and economic terms, denotes a process through which the boundaries of societal order and control recede, leaving the possibility of economic turmoil, infrastructural decline, and demographic shifts. Analogizing this process by way of the physical sciences (and by extension, to the visual realm of the natural world), a failed state is a descriptive term that acknowledges an erosion of physical boundaries, such as when an object through action, inaction, composition, or concept, does not adhere or cohere.

In paintings, drawings, mixed media, and performance by Bent, Burton, Holoweski, and Shoshan, points are plotted but their positions are intermediate and destabilized, architectural forms that should act as natural physical barriers are illusory, figures dissolve and are hyperdigitized, and identity becomes mythic as personalities are confused and blur. Motifs of mechanization and superpositional geometries suggest mass displacement of populations, capital flight, and a distrust of modes of observation in contemporary culture. “Failed States” foreshadows matter as inchoate, perpetually on the cusp of decay and regeneration, and as multiversal, where materiality and existence are instable and irrational.

Curator Bio

Wayne Northcross was born in Detroit, Michigan, where he received a BA in Italian language and literature; he completed a degree in law at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, in Florida. As a magazine editor, Northcross has produced art and fashion features for a range of lifestyle publications, such as Vogue Hommes, Esquire, Out and Gay City News. As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions for the Fusebox Performance Festival in Austin, Texas, and for the Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Project, the Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, and the Bronx Art Space, all in New York. Recently he curated the Reader’s Digest corporate art collection for the company’s new headquarters. This year he will be featured as a curatorial judge in Art/Trek NYC, a documentary-style journey to discover talented artists in every borough of New York City and introduce them to the collecting public.

Cuchifritos is a program of Artists Alliance, Inc.(AAI). Cuchifritos is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. This program is made possible by public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties. We thank the following for their generous support: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The New York City Economic Development Corporation and members of Artists Alliance Inc. Special thanks go to our team of dedicated volunteers, without whom this program would not be possible.