Branch Gallery, Durham North Carolina – Body Politic

I thought I’d begin the show with some nice, wholesome Southern art-speak from North Carolina. I received this via the Re-Title mailing list. The show is taking place in Durham, NC at The Branch Gallery through Dec. 22.

With their hidden text messages and muted palette, Casey Cook’s paintings invite the viewer on a coded journey that is playful and mysterious. A sophisticated use of space and line draws in the viewer, meshing elements of trompe l’oeil, reiterated geometric forms, and organic abstractions to confuse notions of space. Her depiction of the body is fragmented and sexual- male and female intertwine in hedonistic camouflaged repetition. For this exhibition, Cook will create a site-specific wall drawing. Cook, who is based in Carrboro, North Carolina, received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997. She has had solo exhibitions at venues such as Lehmann Maupin, NY and Richard Heller Gallery, CA, and has participated in group exhibitions at venues including Deitch Projects, NY; Pat Hearn Gallery, NY; and Matthew Marks Gallery, NY.

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Also based in New York, Shinque Smith’s dynamic bales and bundles have a textual quality which underscores their anthropomorphic structures. Using discarded, personal, and found items of clothing as her primary resource, Smith’s works transform unwanted and used objects into entropic sculptural forms. In doing so, her works explore the history of commodity exchange, globalism, and poverty. As Smith uses color, texture, and form to blur the line between abstraction and figuration, she disturbs the separation between the body and its trappings, or the consumer and the consumed. Smith received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. She has participated in group and solo exhibitions at venues including Cuchifritos, NY; The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO; Scuola dell’Arte dei Tiraoro e Battioro, Venice, Italy; Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis, MN; and PS1, NY.