Mazes, Microcosms, Mitosis

The Ekru Project and guest curator Danni O’Brien are pleased to present Mazes, Microcosms, Mitosis, a group exhibition opening May 7th, 2021, and running through May 30th, 2021.

Oscillating, burning, multiplying, eroding, sitting, dangling, floating, spreading, breaking, splitting, spitting, slipping.

United in their systemness, a confusing network, tiny epitomic world, and dividing cell unveil themselves in a series of eager sculptures and wall works. Aspirational in their color, material, and concept, these works investigate layers, multiplicity, and liminality. Created through the acts of playing, remixing, and recontextualizing, the works in this show pulsate– punctuating the in between spaces and moments of macro and micro, celestial and earthly, and private and public. Simultaneously depicting labyrinths, little words, scientific phenomena, and their amalgamations, the artworks coalesce into an intimate landscape of material in a constant state of flux.

The show brings together an interdisciplinary cohort of artists Noël Morical (Chicago, IL), Sophia Belkin (New Orleans, LA), Jackie Slanley (Brooklyn, NY), Nina Kintsurashvili (Tbilisi, Georgia [country]), and Megan Reed (Los Angeles, CA). Coming from decidedly varied geographic locations, they each bring dynamism and commitment to the transformation of their chosen source imagery and material.

Sophia Belkin uses dye painting, embroidery, photography, and collage to construct mesmerizing, undulating, ambiguous scapes that feel all at once underwater, beneath a microscope, and emerging from our collective dream world. Referencing craft through the use of applique and embroidery, these works are embedded with layers of once recognizable, everyday imagery; distorted, abstracted, and stretched into their newfound skins.

Noël Morical shares an interest with Belkin in elevating craft and employs macrame to construct complex hanging sculptures made of intersecting neon, pastel, and deep-hued paracord. In a meditative act, they concoct unabashedly cheeky and intimate objects that are sites for presumed familiarity yet feel otherworldly in their forms and affect.

Megan Reed contributes to the soft sculpture vernacular with her dangling and despondent stuffed vinyl sculptures. Through photographing, printing, and sewing imagery of her own work, Reed creates objects that are clearly handmade while also referencing the smoothness of commodity packaging. Alongside her suspended works are miniature hard sculptures that feel dually monumental and delicate wearing high gloss, plastic-like veneers.

Jackie Slanley builds iridescent skins atop cold, hard aluminum, arriving at similarly slick surfaces as Reed. Gathering from Greek mythology and Buddhist stories she remixes and reimagines their collective symbols and iconography into fleshy paintings. Shiny and strong, these spliced and abstracted speculative objects are petrified into portraits of rebirth and fetishization.

Nina Kintsurashvili shares an enchantment with symbols with Slanley and occupies a space somewhere in between figuration and abstraction to arrive at a gestural series of “organic icons”. Drawing from the Orthodox Icon traditions she was trained in by her father, these icons present information referencing the human body, reproduction, and matter, yet are constantly metamorphosizing and becoming symbols of a new mythos.

The Ekru Project is located at 517 E 18th Street Kansas City, Missouri 64108

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