Basie Allen • Cassandra Mayela Allen • Javier Arce • Ellsworth Ausby • Kadar Brock • Kelsey Brookes • Liz Collins • Lauren dela Roche • Uday Dhar • Marcus Magnanni • Jason Middlebook • Acacia Mirable • Maynard Monrow • James Morse • Armando Nin • Jeanne Reynal • Patrick Siler • Bruce M. Sherman • Alex Stern • Kelly Tapia-Chuning • Rob Wynne • Nina Yankowitz

Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to announce Alright Alright Alright, an exhibition reflecting themes of eternal optimism in a complex world with exuberant combinations of color, pattern, geometry and a host of materials, including ceramic, painting, textile, glass, and found wood. The exhibition includes a cross generational group of artists who speak from a variety of perspectives and identities. 

Geometry and pattern runs through the work of artists Acacia Mirable, Liz Collins, Marcus Magnanni, Kelsey Brookes, Alex Stern, and Ellsworth Ausby. Acacia Marable (b. 1988) paints on dart boards: adding oil paint and wire to the sisal surfaces which have their own inherent geometry. The broad areas of color become a way to investigate racial experiences, and the dart board a symbol used to explore ideas of perfection and violence. Liz Collins (b. 1968) is a multimedia artist specializing in textiles and fiber. Her work employs a vibrant color spectrum that incorporates queer feminist sensibilities as well as references to twentieth-century abstraction, the Pattern and Decoration and Op Art movements. Marcus Manganni is a sculptor who uses vocabularies of minimalism, light and space to confront themes of confinement and liberation. The sculptures reflect lived experience with the carceral system. Kelsey Brookes (b. 1978) is a former scientist whose work is informed by research into mathematical and scientific concepts, along with his studies of natural and synthetic hallucinogens. He reimagines molecular processes as tactile large-scale abstractions. Alex Stern (b. 1987) utilizes the shape of the star of David as a way to both take ownership of a significant symbol but also to disassemble and question it through abstraction. Ellsworth Ausby (1942–2011) was dedicated to reflecting a deeply rooted African aesthetic and cultural heritage, responding to the geometry of ancient Egyptian art. In the 1970s, Ausby made unstretched canvases that were attached directly to the wall, utilizing high-keyed color and suggesting sonic rhythms. 

Environmental concerns and eco-theory is central to the work of Jason Middlebrook, Javier Arce, James Morse, Lauren dela Roche, and Basie Allen. Jason Middlebrook and Javier Arce both incorporate untreated wood, sourced from their environments. After relocating from Brooklyn to Columbia County in upstate New York, Jason Middlebrook (b. 1966) began sourcing milled indigenous trees—curly maple, oak, walnut, elm and ash. Adding acrylic paint to the shaped slabs, he leaves the natural grain of wood visible, positioning himself and his interventions as that of a visitor in a long natural history. Javier Arce’s (b. 1973) oil paintings depict vivid natural scenes of trees and blooming wildflowers, inspired by the eco-fiction of Richard Powers and the philosophy of Michael Marder. His canvases are stretched on irregular repurposed untreated wood sourced from the artist’s countryside environment in Cantabria, Spain. Lauren dela Roche (b. 1983) paints a repeating woman across her surfaces to symbolize Mother Nature, the constant process of growth, destruction, and renewal, and ecological ideas about rewilding and regeneration. James Morse (b. 1982) makes symbolic landscape paintings to explore human emotions that arise from interactions with spaces like clear, open fields, or lakes enclosed by trees. A new body of work by Basie Allen (b. 1989) imagines a feral space between the uncertainty of nature and the inevitability of cities. The artist balances organic movement with the grid, signifying the rigidity of our urban spaces. Allen paints his gestural abstractions onto camping tarps before transferring the images onto muslin and linen.

The work of Uday Dhar, Cassandra Mayela Allen, and Kelly Tapia-Chuning explores themes of immigration, migration, and displacement. Kelly Tapia-Chuning (b. 1997) is a mixed Xicana artist of Indigenous descent. Her recent body of work appropriates Mexican serapes, which in the post-revolutionary period were symbolic of homogenous national identity. The artist deconstructs these textiles by removing areas of weft, a process which she sees as an act of decolonization. The resulting cloth, made thinner and more fragile, is stretched out on the wall. Uday Dhar (b. 1957) was born in England and raised in India before immigrating to the United States. The artist’s hybrid identity, as American, South Asian, and queer, has influenced Dhar’s interest in the tension between self-expression and cultural heritage. Dhar’s ongoing series American Portraits of the Zeitgeist emerged from the chaos of the pandemic and evolved into a dialogue around immigration policies. His “cubist” style is a metaphor for discrete pieces of the artist fitted together, functioning as a whole. Cassandra Mayela Allen (b. 1989) creates installational textile works that convey her own experience of forced migration from Venezuela as well as the larger migrant crisis. Her Maps of Displacement series is woven from clothing formerly worn by Venezuelan migrants. In addition, with each item that is donated, Mayela Allen interviews the donor to trace their experience of displacement. 

An exploration of the occult and mysticism informs the work of Kadar Brock; ritualistic process and intuitive automatism also characterizes the work of Armando Nin and Jeanne Reynal. In recent years, Kadar Brock (b. 1980) has researched a new age cult known as The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA), and examined his upbringing within the cult’s teachings and community. Through a repeated system of painting, sanding, priming and scraping, Brock’s paintings explore the construction of identity. Armando Nin (b. 1986) “paints” with soot from a candle’s flame which he manipulates to form trails of smoky circles across his compositions. Several decades earlier, the artist Jeanne Reynal (1903–1993) applied ideas of automatism and chance to the unlikely medium of mosaic, creating works defined by biomorphic forms and overall compositions reflecting light and suggesting earth’s topographies. 

Patrick Siler, Rob Wynne, Maynard Monrow, and Bruce M. Sherman all embrace humor, play, and a “rule-breaking” approach in their work; Nina Yankowitz has long used her work to disrupt societal assumptions and challenge histories that negate women’s accomplishments. Patrick Siler (b. 1939) is a ceramic artist whose work blends wit, technical experimentation, and the iconography of Americana. The artist found his voice in the Bay Area funk scene of the late 1960s. He expanded the traditional form of plates into expressive, large scale surfaces, and used stencils to add irreverent symbols of pop culture. In her 1970s Draped and Pleated Paintings, Nina Yankowitz (b. 1946) introduced principles from the Feminist Art Movement into her practice. She incorporated sewing, pleating, and other handicraft techniques maligned as feminine into her painterly process—challenging the notion of “women’s work.” Breaking the rules of glassblowing, Rob Wynne (b. 1948) demonstrates its malleability, shaping it into text pieces to alter meaning and suggest narratives. Maynard Monrow also makes text-based work with socio-political content and a witty attitude. His sculptures are rendered in readymade industrial formats, like cafe menu boards and stanchions signs. Bruce M. Sherman (b. 1942) is a ceramic artist who combines elements of figuration and abstraction in whimsical anthropomorphic sculptures. Sherman’s hand-thrown work joins flat planes and cylinders with stylized faces and disembodied expressions, maintaining a delicate balance between humor and reverence; surrealism and tradition; function and beauty.