Phantom Limb
Curated by Thomas Marquet
Saturday, July 22, 2017 - Saturday, September 2, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 22, 2017 7pm-10pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, September 2, 2017
"I did not say this. I am not here."—Guild Navigator, David Lynch's Dune
Genesis Belanger
John Bohl
Gina Dawson
Nicole Dyer
Guest Spot @ THE REINSTITUTE is proud to present, Phantom Limb. We would like to dedicate this exhibition to the many who have faced extreme hardships over this past year keeping their art spaces open.
In the classic slasher movies to which both the film Scream and its killers refer, the mask of the killer, whether Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface, constitutes their identity. It is only by assuming their distinctive appearance that the killers become fully themselves. In Screamthis relationship is destabilized as the face of the killer, the mask rendered in Gina Dawson's sculpture, is inhabited by two actors, the appearance of the supernatural achieved only by playing on assumptions of the slasher's singularity to misdirect both victims and viewers. The mask of the killer is no longer about personhood so much as procedure. Dawson's work renders this iconic face in transparent form, a net containing both a trapped butterfly and a finger exhorting it and us on the best way out.
In the work of all of these artists, bodies, whether whole or in part, follow their own prerogatives, detached from questions of singular identity. The paintings of John Bohl render an uncanny nature with unnatural precision, in which bodies mutate and coexist with other, seemingly alien forms, as octopi attempt to make use of kitchen chairs and spiders encircle limbs of uncertain provenance. Conversely, Nicole Dyer's hand is palpable in her handling of paint, just as the figures within her images reach out to make contact with one another.
In Genesis Belanger's ceramic sculptures, limbs exist in solitude, with no sense of further connection. Whether reincorporated into historical sculptural forms, as in A Sphinx Who Serves, or performing an act of selection, in which the full force of a muscular, well-manicured hand is brought to bear on the selection of a single pill, they are subsumed into their actions, and the crispness and clarity of their construction gives them a sense of sculptural inevitability.
Genesis Belanger is a Brooklyn based sculptor. She is currently working in ceramics hand building handsome jokes about the absurdity of the patriarchy in a material that lasts forever. The work engages in a conversation about the present and its relationship to the past, a past that most of us would not have had the privilege to shape. Belanger received her BFA from the school of the art institute of Chicago and her MFA at CUNY Hunter college. She was a recipient of a 2016 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant.
John Bohl was born in 1983 in New York. He graduated with a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005 and currently lives and works in Baltimore. Some notable exhibitions include “Gran Prix" (Nudashank/Greshams Ghost, Baltimore), “Metaspace” (Springsteen Gallery, Baltimore), "Cookbook Dreams and Inflatable Futures" (Guest Spot at The Reinstitute, Baltimore), “Acid Summer”(DCKT, New York) and"6 x 6" Transmitter (New York ).
Gina Dawson was born in Dallas, TX and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA from the University of North Texas in 2002 and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2005. She has had solo exhibitions in New York, Paris and Boston as well as multiple group exhibitions in Texas, Boston, Baltimore, and New York. Dawson has a diverse studio and sculptural practice which mostly involves incredibly laborious processes that often result in objects she is unsatisfied with. Like most artists this leads her to make even more objects.
Nicole Dyer, born in 1991, makes work as a way to preserve cherished memories focusing on connecting with others. Armed with an obsession for color, detail, and pattern, her work preserves cherished memories and act as a reminder to experience life outside her studio. Dyer graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013 with a BFA in Drawing. She has since show internationally in Ireland, as well as in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. She currently lives in Baltimore, MD.
