NYC Exhibitions: Kristen Sanders & Graham Durward

OPENING TOMORROW. MARCH 8th, 6-8 pm. Kristen Sanders: Early Bodies at Brennan & Griffin & Graham Durward at Step Sister

“The hand posed, pressed against the wall, grasps nothing. It is no longer a prehensile hand, but is offered like the form of an impossible or abandoned grasp. A grasp that could as well let go. The grasp of a letting go: the letting go of form.”
– Jean-Luc Nancy, “Painting in the Grotto”, 1994

Brennan & Griffin presents Early Bodies, an exhibition of new paintings by Minneapolis based artist Kristen Sanders.

The paintings presented in Early Bodies draw parallels between prehistoric hominids and Artificial Intelligence, encapsulating both the prehuman and posthuman. Sanders constructs her paintings with layers of imagery depicting prehistoric stone tools, cave paintings, extinct hominids and recently developed AI real dolls. Veils of acidic hues illuminate scenes of evolutionary self discovery, bringing to question the anthropological distinctions made between anatomically modern and behaviorally modern humans.
The juxtaposition of prehistoric and AI imagery flattens the distance in time between the origins and potentiality of self awareness, suggesting that perhaps the threshold of what it means to be human exists at multiple points.

Kristen Sanders lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Recent exhibitions include Kristen Sanders & Vanessa Thill, Step Sister, New York, NY, Soft Origin (solo), Sadie Halie Projects, Minneapolis, MN, Small Objects : Part 1, Lacuna Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, Whateverbeing, Present Company, Brooklyn, NY and Maternity Leave: Para-Natural Pregnancies at Sediment Arts in Richmond, VA.

Step Sister is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by New York based artist Graham Durward.

Durward’s works feature groups of beach goers, referencing the “bathers” trope found across art history. The scenes are interrupted by oversized fingerprints that distance the image and often obscure the identity of the figures. The fingerprint impression is at once both highly specific and ubiquitous, an identifying marker that has been turned into an abstraction, causing a shifting of scale in Durward’s tableaus. Richly painted in thick and thinned out oil, the swimmer’s physiques are built up, washed away or blurred in a constant flux of definition. This image is revisited in each painting, similar to how memory creates different narratives around identical facts. Durward’s own identity floats over his subjects, their anonymity kept intact by the artist’s “touch”.

Graham Durward lives and works in New York. Notable solo exhibitions include Shrine, New York, NY, 2016, Michael Steinberg, New York, NY, 2014, Louis B. James, New York, NY, 2012, Maureen Paley, London, UK, 2009 and White Columns, New York, NY, 2007. Recent group exhibitions include Exalted Position, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY, 2016 and Walter Robinson and Graham Durward, Kai Matsumiya, New York, NY, 2016.