Opening Reception: March 15 at 7 PM
Borrowing its title from Arthur Russell’s 1986 album, this exhibition reconsiders the legacies of two maverick artists—Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman—focusing on their intersections, shared spaces, and continued echoes today. The show takes Seth Parker Woods’ audio installation The Holy Presence—which presents his performance of the 10 cello parts in Eastman’s 1981 masterwork The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc in an array of speakers—as a model for an immersive, focused, and somatic intersection of the artist’s work. Other contemporary artists in the exhibition who contend with the legacy of Julius Eastman and Arthur Russell include: Devendra Banhart, Julia Holter, Roberto Carlos Lange, Justen Leroy, Kyle Marshall, Missy Mazzoli, Moor Mother, Dave Muller, Ethan Philbrick, Adee Roberson, Christopher Rountree, claire rousay, Kristi Sword, Adam Tendler, Davóne Tines, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste & LaMont Hamilton, Saul Williams, Wild Up, Matt Wolf, richard valitutto, and Andrew Yee. Incorporating archival materials including rarely seen video and newly available audio, the exhibition draws attention to the various modes of collaboration between Eastman and Russell—as curator, conductor, performer, musician, and friend—from 1975 until their all-too-early deaths. With particular attention to the ways in which their work implicated the queer body and utilized language as modes of liberation, this exhibition seeks to reimagine their legacies as multi-hyphenate, world-straddling artists whose work together encompasses the breadth and possibility of creativity expanding from classical performance and minimalist composition to the rise of disco and dance to experimental intermedia work.