Main Space

CLAPPING CORNERS
May 6 - 28, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6, 5-7pm

Brooklyn, NY (April  25, 2023) — Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Clapping Corners, a group exhibition in the main gallery by Cornell University MFA artists: Giselle Hobbs, Shelby Johnson, Annamariah Knox, and Bec Sommer.  An opening reception with the artists will be held on Saturday, May 6th from 5 to 7 pm. The show will be open to the public through Sunday, May 28, 2023. 

For the past two years, the four artists in the show have worked together in an intimate graduate program in Ithaca, NY. Their works explore overlapping themes of the body’s relation to space and to inner states of being. Clapping Corners addresses the resonant energy that a space can hold and the ways it can impact bodies within, creating a reciprocal exchange. The works range across explorations of the body as an environment, the interface between mind and body, and the permeability and blurring of interiors and exteriors. Together, the show considers the nature of physicality, immateriality, the consolidation of self, and of collective action. 

Bec Sommer’s Sickroom and Sisterhood are two paintings that act as a couple and come from the Starvation Fantasy suite of works. They feature figures through overlapping marks and washes of watercolor, ink, and acrylic paint. Depicting interpersonal and internal conflict within spaces that transform themselves between the interior and the exterior, the privacy of a bedroom is also the exposure of a forest. His video, Michael Friedan, is a play on both the feminist concept of the problem without a name, from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and the character of Michael Myers, who is named in the credits of the original Halloween as simply The Shape. This is a psychodrama in which a slasher villain experiences the sort of gendered and racialized emptiness that Friedan describes. 

Giselle Hobbs’ Brain Medusozoans are mycelium and wood sculptures from her recent body of work, Brain Storm. These works translate her brain into a functioning mycorrhizal network while creating an ecosystem that bridges neural, arboreal, and cosmic structures. Inspired by annual experiences of brain MRIs where she waited apprehensively for the results of her scans, these living sculptures probe the nature of the mind as an environment that has structural parallels with tree roots and galaxies bridged by strands of matter. 

Annamariah Knox’s Phase Change are gateways reflecting states of being. The screen print and stuffed fabric shapes explore the form of emotions as they relate to bodies within architectural structures. As viewers pass under them, the arches function as devices for passage as transformation, for passage as a state change. The printed images reference body scans, x-rays of limbs, and the soft tendril-like forms invoke certain vibrations inherent to emotional experiences.

Shelby Johnson’s Seraphim Trinitas are three singers stuck in an eternal cycle of praising a God who will never accept them. The crocheted figures distort the human form. This work is a reflection on Johnson’s  experience of growing up queer in the southern baptist church. They were outed and underwent an attempted exorcism by three women. The trio are simultaneously the women who tried to pray the gay away, the holy trinity, the three fates, and Johnson’s inner id, ego, and superego.

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ARTIST BIOS
Annamariah Knox (b. New York City, NY 1993) received a BA in Art History and Theater from Bowdoin College (2015), and is currently a Masters in Fine Arts candidate in Sculpture at Cornell University. She is a multidisciplinary artist primarily working with textiles, soft sculpture, and movement. Annamariah has shown work at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN, in Ithaca, NY, Brunswick, ME, and  in Brooklyn, NY. 

Bec Sommer (b. Saint Louis, MO 1997) received his BFA in painting from KCAI in 2020 and his MFA from Cornell University in 2023.  He is a painter and a videomaker who also works in the realms of screenwriting, sculpture, and sound design.  Most recently, he has completed a two-part feature length video project that examines the pitfalls of moralizing desire, particularly how these moralizations get used by reactionaries and bad actors.  Bec Sommer has shown at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center and Vulpes Bastille in Kansas City, Cornell University in Ithaca, and Ortega Y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, NY.  He has also participated as a student in the SOMA Summer Program of 2022, entitled Avatars in Paradise.

Shelby Johnson (b. Birmingham, AL 1996) received their BFA in Art Education from Texas Christian University in 2018 and MFA in Creative Visual Arts from Cornell University in 2023. They create installations with soft sculpture and sound to re-imagine their past experiences. Johnson has shown in Fort Worth, TX, Dallas, TX, Ithaca, NY, and Brooklyn, NY. They also founded PLANT Gallery in Dallas, TX in 2018.

Giselle Hobbs received her MA in Art History from Syracuse University in 2020 and her MFA from Cornell University in 2023. She creates large-scale illusionistic paintings that probe the relationship between humans and the natural environment. Her work also includes photography, bio-art, and sculptural installation.