SCARAMOUCHE

presents

DOUBLE-JOINTED CAMERON CRAWFORD and JIBADE-KHALIL HUFFMAN

Curated by Megha Ralapati

OPENING: Sunday, May 20, 6 – 8pm EXHIBITION DATES: May 20 – July 8, 2012

Scaramouche is pleased to present Double-Jointed, an exhibition bringing together new and recent work by Cameron Crawford and Jibade-Khalil Huffman, both of whose practices rely on the articulation of visual ideas through language.

Double-jointed implies a special inclination for flexibility, describing mobility or contortion most people cannot manage. It suggests a degree of abnormality, but it’s an ‘unusual’ that feels comprehensible, or better yet, productive. Double-jointed involves a single joint or (con)junction, which is a convergence, out of which emerges a fork. It is a fork anchored by a shared hinge. As such, there is a hub, an articulation, an axis that allows two elements to pivot or swivel.

Language is always double-jointed: at once literal and figurative, material and immaterial. There is a phonic (which is to say material) aspect of language that isn’t accounted for by semantics. It is performance, voice, register; breath and moisture, throat and mouth, as well as wood and metal. These elements are in constant relation to one another but not always moving in the same direction. They flex toward and away, always linked, in a state of mutual support.

The expression double-jointed provides foundation for both of these artists, manifest and tangible through poetry in Huffman’s videos, collages, and slide shows; while Crawford’s texts serve to order and classify, providing a sort of taxonomy realized through drawings, illustrations, and sculptural elements. Converging through language, the artists’ works lithely rotate outward through their methodology and engagement with material.

Cameron Crawford (Boulder, 1983) received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Northwestern University. His most recent exhibitions include the 2012 Whitney Biennial, Almanza/Crawford at New Capital, and Mouthing (the sentient limb) at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. His writing has been featured in the book Blast Counterblast (Mercer Union/Whitewalls/University of Chicago) and The Manual for Treason (Sharjah Art Foundation). He was a 2011 recipient of The Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists. His work can be seen in the collections of Deborah Lovely and Huey Copeland. He lives and works in New York and Maine.

Jibade-Khalil Huffman (Detroit, 1981) is the author of two books of poems, 19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008) and James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011). His art and writing projects, spanning photography, video, performance and poetry, have been exhibited and performed at MoMA/PS1, Mt. Tremper Arts, Eighth Veil and Southern Exposure, among others. His awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize, the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant, and fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts and the UCross Foundation. He was recently named a Workspace Artist-in-Residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York. Educated at Bard College and Brown University, he lives and works in Los Angeles.

Megha Ralapati is an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in Chicago and is currently developing a residency program for artists at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago.

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For more information please contact the gallery: (212) 228-2229 52 Orchard St. New York, NY 10002 www.scaramoucheart.com Hours: Wed. – Sat. 12N-6pm, Sun. 1pm-5:30pm, and by appt.