Curated by Adrienne Greenblatt. Featured artists: Ophelia Arc, Bella Carlos, Magdalena Dukiewicz, Harry Gould Harvey IV, Nina Hartmann, thai Lu, Emmett Palaima, Harris Rosenblum, Ren Sanchez, TARWUK & Garth Weiser.

humanity is a complex system;

the dissociative hyperreality, the delicate phosphorescent embrace

indulgent neural networks and controlled burns

mechanized reclusion of interconnectedness

rhi•zome : has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhi•zome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb ‘to be,’ but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ‘and . . . and . . . and . . .’ This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb ‘to be.’ Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you heading for? These are totally useless questions.

(Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia)

An argument could be made that, in our post-postmodern post-postinternet post-facts post-everything world, that contemporary art is the study of hierarchies. Artists, curators, gallerists, critics; all become shamanic voyagers on the psychic plane of cultural, financial, conceptual, ideological and aesthetic hierarchies, aiming to guide the viewer safely towards an experience sat somewhere in the shade of enlightenment - the good ones anyway.

It’s an apocalyptic scene in the art world, over-reported markets create conservative programmes with even more conservative collectors - who cares if the Yves Klein drops a couple hundred k? They’ll find some other way to wash their money or dodge their taxes. Artists can become cynical, reproducing the same work over and over again like some kind of horrific AI trapped in an endless cycle of decorating the homes of arms dealers and financial traders, babbling the same bylines about bodies in space until they themselves are mercifully jettisoned into space, their heads exploding with satisfying pops, like that one episode of The Simpsons.

As Homer said: Remember me as I am, filled with murderous rage!

This carnivorous landscape changes people, bending them into something else, like when vampires feed on other vampires in Underworld and get all crazy. Every crooked deal, little bit of soul sold and the ones who never had one in the first place further pollutes art’s delicate ecosystem. Structures are restructured and the mutations continue until what remains barely resembles the previous incarnation - money, fame, power et al. Were byproducts of art, but as culture continues to eat itself from the tail forward, they become the driving force. Cynical move after cynical move, boring fucking shit washed down with glass after glass of cheap, vinegary white wine and the fizzing ache of coke depression dragged up and into view with the rising sun - until the next time, and the cycle continues.

All of those hierarchies, the ones we become attuned to navigating, are based on value. The three types of value being Financial, social and cultural. Social value, in this case, refers to the value which artists, galleries, collectors etc. Have against the social status of the other stakeholders. Showing art, writing about art and (in the worst cases) making art become about balancing the way that a given practice can satisfy these different types of value, with almost no regard given to whether something is actually good, or what that even means.

Rhi•zome questions this existing structure, leaning back into the pre-post world and reinterpreting the great interpreters, the high priests of semiotics, long since quoted into the ground by over-read and under-aware young men with thick rimmed glasses and no ideas.

Great ideas survive, and the semioticians who waxed lyrical about the rise of the television, global media etc. have once again gathered us around the proverbial fire, helmed for words of dissent in the form of Adrienne Greenblatt’s vision for an art world more effective in criticising itself, healing through inward contemplation.

The exhibition questions the establishment of these art-world hierarchies, and the systems of value that create them. Century old questions around dynamics in media, how we can appraise a painting critically against a performance, the position of technical craft against ideas, without the often too attractive prospect of taking sides.

Rhi•zome prioritises the notion of an idea, the value of discussion and sharing or information, of finding common ground instead of planting flags. It calls for an anarchistic appraisal of contemporary art existing outside of the current structure, to re-establish value in connection, to encourage support of new ways of thinking, in whatever capacities they reveal themselves.

Now, more than ever, we need to understand and build on the ideas of the early semiotician; Lotringer, Guatarri, Deleuze, Baudrillard - these are no longer fashionable names in contemporary art, but only because lazy writers chose to quote them instead of understanding.

This exhibition acts as an opportunity to consider a rhizomatic interpretation of art not as a field of academic study but as an activity, something that we can engage in. Where discussions happening in the gallery have to shift, moving towards a new interpretation and away from gossip and financial speculation.

Ophelia Arc (b. 2001 White Plains, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Using sculpture, video, and installation Arc investigates psychoanalytic themes as they relate to her personal experiences and memories. Selected exhibitions include No Format (London, UK), Whitebox (New York, NY), Atlantic Gallery (New York, NY), Westbeth Gallery (New York, NY), Woman Made Gallery (Chicago IL) and Collar Works (Troy, NY). She will be starting her MFA in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Fall 2023.

Bella Carlos (b. 1998) is a glass artist from North Carolina. Bella was taught how to work with glass by their mother who is a stained glass artist and comes from a tradition of Southern craft. Dual enrolled, they earned a BA in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in socio-cultural anthropology at Brown University in 2021; after which they promptly went on to study metalsmithing at the Royal College of Art in London. Bella has shown at Dunkunsthalle (New York, NY), Gallery Kannski (Reykjavik, ISL), Subtitled NYC (New York, NY), Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art (Fall River, MA), Avalon Cafe (London, UK), and Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY). Additionally, Bella’s work has been featured in New York Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, British Vogue, Vogue Scandinavia, The New York Times, and Paper Magazine.

Magdalena Dukiewicz (b. Warsaw, Poland) is a visual artist based in New York. Her multidisciplinary and often site-responsive practice is rooted in methodologies of process and material experimentation. In her work, Dukiewicz explores topics of consumerism, environment, identity, and gender. Currently, Dukiewicz is a PhD candidate at the Complutense University in Madrid, where she completed her MFA (2013). Her work has been presented in solo and two-person exhibitions at Ghostmachine Gallery, New York, NY (2023), Ivy Brown Gallery, New York, NY, (2022), Fundación Bacalarte, Warsaw, Poland (2021), The Border Project Space, New York, NY (2020), and Stand4 Gallery, New York, NY (2020). Her work was showcased as a part of the inaugural show at Bio BAT Art Space and Sci Art Center, New York, NY (2019), and during the Berlin Art and Science Week (2018). Dukiewicz has been included in group exhibitions at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, New York, NY (2022), Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2019), Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2017), and the Museum of Jurassic Technology, LA, CA (2016). In Fall 2023, she will be a resident artist at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY.

Harry Gould Harvey IV (b. 1991) lives and works in Fall River, MA. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Arrows of Desire, with Faith Wilding, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 2021; The Confusion of Tongues!, Bureau, New York, NY, 2021; Coniunctio, with Kyung-Me, Bureau, New York, NY, 2019; Earth Crisis, with Samantha Durand, Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York, NY, 2018; Amen, Thanks Computer God!, with Jesse Sullivan, Freddy, Harris, NY, 2018; Prudence, Patience, Hope & Despair, Motel, Brooklyn, NY, 2018; Harry Gould Harvey IV with Species, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA, 2018. Harvey is the founder of the curatorial project Pretty Days and co-founder of the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, Fall River, MA. He participated in the 2021 New Museum Triennial, Soft Water Hard Stone. In spring 2023, Harvey presented An Anathema Strikes the Flesh of the Laborer at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, NY.

Nina Hartmann (b. 1990 Miami, FL) is a multimedia artist working in Long Island City, New York. She received an MFA from Yale School of Art in Painting & Printmaking in 2023 and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Her works operate at the nexus between sculpture and painting, and conceptually map spaces connecting mysticism, alternative histories, systems theory, and critical thought. Hartmann’s work is created through an ongoing research practice cataloging images from both online and institutional archives. The work functions as an ongoing inquiry investigating systems of belief, an attempt to illuminate the invisible systems that surround us through mapping and drawing connections. Her work has been featured at Tara Downs (NYC), Perrotin (NYC), Silke Lindner Gallery (NYC), V1Gallery (Copenhagen), Harkawik Gallery (LA), and more.

thai Lu is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and community organizer centering their practice on the social, cultural, and physical effects of chronic illness. As a chronically ill, disabled, neurodivergent, and gender-divergent first generation American thai a family of Vietnamese refugees, thai works at the intersections of Western bio-politics, Southeast Asian diaspora, post-war intergenerational suffering, relational ecologies of interdependence, and the concept of metamorphosis. Through their personal work, thai invites the consideration of disability in the context of oppressive social structures of power. Through their community work, thai strives to aggressively augment this reality. Technology provides us with assistive connective strategies—though it can also be weaponized to further realities of oppression. In many ways, we exist under surveillance: observed and policed by militarized systems of control. Despite the extent of these capacities for abuses of power and limitations of rights, the ongoing struggle against ableism and sanism demonstrates an inventiveness that comes with resiliency. Contained within this struggle, are both dystopian nightmares and utopian possibilities. thai continues to explore creative and strategic opportunities to challenge disabling structures for resistance and radical change.

Emmett Palaima (b. 1995) is a Brooklyn-based artist working with electronics and esoteric processes of sound creation. His practice is conceptually rooted in the idea that technology and magic are one and the same, and that electricity is a manifestation of the divine or elemental forces underlying physical reality. In his work he seeks alternatively to celebrate the power of this force and give it worship, through the creation of devotional objects and intensely physical electronic experiences, and to analyze humanity’s relationship to this force in the context of a globalized industrial economy. His practice is a consolidation of these diverse influences, combining elements of functional and aesthetic design, sound, performance, and immersive space. His past work includes solo and group gallery exhibitions, exhibition at Currents New Media Festival, work as a Sound Technologist for immersive installations with Meow Wolf Creative Studios and Dadalab, work on installation audio for the Whitney Biennial and the Palm Springs Art Museum, performance as a touring musician with Elizabeth Colour Wheel, and professional design of guitar pedals and synthesizers.

Harris Rosenblum is a sculptor living and working in Belmont, Massachusetts. Recent solo exhibitions include Inorganic Demons at Sara’s (New York, NY) and Relics of the Corrupted Blood at Blade Study (New York, NY). He received his MFA in Ceramics from Kent State University in 2022 and is a fabrication tech at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is a member and contributor to internet based collective, Do Not Research.

Ren Sanchez (b. 1989 Windham, CT) is a sound artist based in Brooklyn NY, focusing on our tactile, spatial, and temporal relationship to audio. They digitally re/decontextualize samples and field recordings to create dissociative sonic landscapes, engage with club music tropes through their use of modular synthesis, and build and design sound devices for use in their practice as well as for others. They have performed and presented work at various venues, including: Synesthesia (2019), Ortega y Gassett Projects (2021), and IRT Theatre (2023).

TARWUK: Bruno Pogačnik Tremow (b. 1981, Zagreb, Croatia) and Ivana Vukšić (b. 1981, Dubrovnik, Croatia)], works as a single entity, form part of a generation who came of age during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Now living and working in New York, the artist’s practice can be understood within the context of the aspirations, struggles and eventual dissolution of the former Yugoslavian state, and its elusive avant-garde. Vuksic received her MA from Faculty of Political Sciences, Zagreb and Bruno received dual MFAs from Columbia University and Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. Solo and two person exhibitions include White Cube, London (2023); Maramotti Collection, Emilia Romagna, Italy (2021); Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, (2021); Martos Gallery, New York (2020); 15 Orient, New York (2020); Lauba, Zagreb (2020); Evening Hours, New York (2019); Taito Ryokan, Tokyo (2019); Gauntlet, New York (2018); and Team Gallery, New York (2018).

Garth Weiser (b. 1979 Helena, MT) is concerned with languages of abstraction and the physicality of the painted surface. Marked by a sense of materiality and texture, as well as a striking synthesis of addition and subtraction, Weiser’s densely textured oeuvre underlines the artist’s fascination with the evolution of painting. His work is created by overlaying abstraction upon abstraction, each unique layer representing a distinct history in terms of content, form and materiality, resulting in a gestural surface burnished with shimmering strata of thick pigment. Highly textured, his paintings resemble fossilized slabs, their facture near tangible to the viewer. The vascular surfaces of the works trigger chromatic vibrations and optical illusions. Multiple perspectives and after-images emerge and recede with tributaries feeding and looping back into one another, giving rise to a new and complex visual lexicon, rooted in the canon of abstract painting. Recent solo exhibitions include at Simon Lee Gallery, London, England (2022); Casey Kaplan, New York, NY (2021); Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong, China (2019); and The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX* (2017)