MAR. 25 - May 31, 2023 - UP IN THE AIR
Seiya Bowen - “Fish out of water”, 2015, archival injet print, 24”x36”, Edition of 5
OPENING
March 25, 2023, 6-9pm
DURATION
March 25 - May 31, 2023
COLLECTORS DINNER
March 24, 2023, 7pm Info and Rerservation
In Up in the Air, four artists approach the queasy dread of our current moment with both levity and melancholy, creating an experience that asks viewers questions about how we cooperate with a complicated legacy in modern America, and what we leave behind by ignoring our agency in the present.
Simultaneously, the exhibition recounts and accounts for the curator, Alex Rockelmann’s, five years spent in New Mexico, far from her home in Berlin. Up in the Air marks the final show at birds + Richard before Rockelmann, and the gallery’s co-owner, Michael Kuhn, return to Germany and the Albuquerque gallery closes. While it is a public-spirited look at the way things are and an ode to the moments of faint but rising hope, imagining the way they could be, it is also a personal bookend for Rockelmann and Kuhn.
A few months after their arrival in New Mexico in 2018, the pair made their way to Santa Fe for the opening of 2019’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know exhibition, marking their entreé into the local art scene. At that time they were introduced to Jennifer Vasher, who is featured in Up in the Air. They also connected with Southwest Contemporary, the host of the 2019 exhibition and now sponsors of Up In the Air’s collectors’ dinner. And so, this exhibition is both a nod to birds + Richard beginnings, as well as a goodbye.
The exhibition features four artists with ties to the Southwest: Allyson Packer, Seiya Bowen, Jeffrey Teuton, and Jennifer Vasher.
In Allyson Packer’s video work, Control the Head, Control the Horse, the aesthetics of distress are explored through spoken word, the aural experience of ASMR, and images lifted from a horse-training manual. Sensual and unsettling, the piece examines our collective passion for discomfort and its tolerance—and the impulse to assign beauty as springing from them. Through its exploration of distress, we naturally arrive at questions of control. Who creates distress? Who tolerates it? And what experience of beauty arises on either side of that power dynamic?
Up in the Air also features two photographs from Seiya Bowen’s Nadachi series, documenting the transformation of the rural Japanese town where his grandparents once lived. “Picking Weeds” is a spare portrait of an almost empty bucket we have to presume was once full of flowers. “Fish out of water” depicts a koi fish, dead and wearily flopped over the edge of a metal sink. Koi ponds, once a common facet of Japanese homes, are now relics, a tradition vanishing into modernity. The shadowy images collapse the distance between here and there, because the themes are so close to home—emptying countrysides, encroaching urbanization, change unchecked.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Teuton’s Stack of Bricks/Lifeline, a site-specific installation of 28 arranged and painted bricks deals in the concretization of the gaze and its exchange. On each brick cartoonish eyes are painted, leering up at us. They are building blocks—and potential weapons of revolt—whose hapless stare can never be evaded. As whimsical as they seem, they have a transgressive edge, a subtext of surveillance.
Rounding out the show are Jennifer Vasher’s text drawings, fixated on both modifying words and phrases riffing on cleanliness. Through curling, repeated cursive lines like “I wash my hands of this” Vasher explores the idea of cleanliness as a cheap shortcut to moral goodness, and our own cultural shortsightedness on what constitutes virtue.
Taken as a whole, Up in the Air argues against mechanical resignation to the status quo and uses little gestures, individual works of art, to “stabilize the bigger picture,” as Rockelmann puts it.
Victory is more than dreaming up an expression of the times we live in, which are always the source of our collective morning. It is the possibility that we share when we gather around a photograph, listen to ASMR together, trace the letters of “so” and “almost,” or observe a pile of bricks that stare back. Even if it only lasts for an opening night or the run of an exhibition, it is the possibility that these things can create a new little society—imperfect and incomplete—made out of our shared and intimate understanding of the way things are.
While Up in the Air marks a final chapter, it also opens a new passage. In 2025, Rockelmann will re-open her Berlin gallery. The first show will be devoted exclusively to showcasing New Mexico artists. The curated and juried exhibition will be in collaboration with collaboration with Southwest Contemporary. “What we’ve experienced here is special,” Rockelmann said. “New Mexico’s artists are truly world-class, and they deserve every opportunity that gives them consideration on the world stage.”
To stay connected to birds + Richard’s Berlin gallery, follow them at @birds_richard. For more details on Up in the Air”s collectors’ dinner in collaboration with Southwest Contemporary, contact Alex Rockelmann at alex@birds-richard.xyz. The opening for Up in the Air will take place on March 25, 2023 from 6 to 9pm; visits will also be available by appointment. Visit birds-richard.xyz for more information.
About birds + Richard
birds + Richard is a contemporary art gallery located in the Ridgecrest neighborhood of Albuquerque, NM, with a sister branch located in Berlin, Germany. Focused on the experimental and boundary-pushing, birds + Richard is also the home of Richard B., a curated two-table food experience.
About Southwest Contemporary
Southwest Contemporary is the leading resource for contemporary arts and culture in the Southwest. Headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in print since 1992, Southwest Contemporary publishes curated and critical perspectives on contemporary arts and culture throughout the Southwest, supports Southwest-based artists and arts organizations through their print and digital platforms, and produces events and career development programming.
PRESS CONTACT
For more information and for high resolution images, please contact the gallery at abq@birds-richard.xyz.