Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to present Midnight Murmurs, a group exhibition featuring Janaye Brown, Nicole Coson, Dickon Drury, Masako Miki, Emma Safir, and Mikey Yates.
The artists in Midnight Murmurs ruminate on the quiet and intimate moments, secrets, and untold stories that occur behind the scenes in the late hours of the evening. It encompasses the conversations, obsessions, and rumblings of memories and anxieties that keep us up at night and linger in our minds throughout the waking hours. The exhibition features depictions of dimly lit domestic spaces, intimate late-night conversations, and the surreal moments that occur when the mind slips from reality into a dream state, rendered through a variety of media including video, printmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. Midnight Murmurs heightens moments of friction that exist during a time when our bodies ought to rest. Together, the works reveal how the night is full of mystery and potential that will shape our consciousness in the mornings to come.
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Janaye Brown
For the past decade, Janaye Brown's video practice has captured the pregnant moments she observes in everyday life. Through an extended look at a narrative fragment, Brown makes prominent the subtleties in interactions, opening the viewer to examine the details within the mise-en-scène. In her intimate video, Bather, After Dinner (2016), Brown films a swimmer resting her body on a dock. The artist catches the soft light across the surface of the water and the relaxing sound of it lapping on the pier, marking the sunset and the earth's transition from daytime to night. As the seemingly serene moment carries on, tension arises: the viewer anxiously anticipates what is to come, as the subject is lost in their own thoughts. Sound and moving image build and sustain the viewer's awareness while emphasizing the passage of time. Rocking the viewer to a meditative state, the artist summons a tone of mystery, leaving us suspect to the night.
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Janaye Brown
Bather, After Dinner, 2016HD Video, Color, Sound, TRT: 2:34
Variable
Edition of 3 plus 2 artist's proofs -
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Nicole Coson (b. 1992, Manila, Philippines; Lives and works London, UK) is a London-based Filipino artist. She received a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins with first degree honors in 2014 and received her MFA from the Royal College of Art in 2020. She was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020. Coson was also featured in Saatchi Gallery's London Grads Now exhibition last year. She has had solo exhibitions at Ben Hunter Gallery, London, UK; Silverlens Galleries, Manila, Philippines; Galerie Untilthen, Paris, France; and Annka Kultys Gallery, London, UK. She has participated in group exhibitions at South London Gallery, London, UK; Hales Gallery, London, UK; Silverlens Galleries, Manila, Philippines; Artist Room, London, UK; Fold Gallery, London, UK; Brigade Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Center for Book Arts, New York; and Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila.
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Some are known as Tsukumo-Gami, shapeshifters of rejected aged tools, or everyday household objects that become animated only in the late hours of the day, advocating for their existence after being unwanted. For the artist, these ancient narratives of spirits serve as a metaphor to explore our imaginations, blurring boundaries and questioning the very myths that guide our daily lives.
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Masako MikiKujaku Ao Kyorinrin (Animated Ancient Sutra in Peacock Blue), 2022Wool on EPS foam, Wenge wood40 x 32 x 18 in
101.6 x 81.3 x 45.7 cm -
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Mikey YatesAunties, 2022Oil and oil stick on canvas72 x 60 in
182.9 x 152.4 cm -
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Dickon Drury
Dickon Drury's hyper-saturated, large-scale paintings render unpopulated interior landscapes packed with accessories of books, computers, kitchenware, opened food, and beverages, reminiscent of a person frantically preparing for an uncertain tomorrow. Unnatural light reflects and refracts from various surfaces and stark shadows create a dynamic interior setting. In his stacked and flattened paintings, the artist reveals a bounty of visual markers that speak to the possible inhabitant. Light casts from open microwaves, brightly lit screens on laptops, and vintage lava lamps highlight an eccentric scene that mimics the occupied mind—one that is active, awake and refuses to remain still. Attempting to make sense of the scene, the viewer ponders what these remnants say about the house guest. Drury’s work speaks to the obsessive nature and anxieties of the day and a desire to control a world that feels chaotic. Through his oil paintings, he bends and skews the domestic space, reinforcing how the night's emptiness amplifies the restlessness of our minds and spaces.
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Emma SafirMadrid 2015, Arnhem 2020, 2022Digital collage printed on silk, neoprene, pine, upholstery foam, silk thread, flashe paint28 x 18 x 1 1/2 in
71.1 x 45.7 x 3.8 cm -
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Building a photo archive of spaces that she does not have physical access to, Safir captures when areas are blocked by curtains, windows, other buildings, or fences. Stretching, layering, and sewing these images in modular ways, Safir creates soft objects that pixelate a specific location, both named and unnamed.
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Emma SafirWoven Mirrors III, 2022Digital collage printed on silk, vinyl, smocking, appliqué, MDF, upholstery foam, silk thread, flashe paint57 x 37 x 1 1/2 in
144.8 x 94 x 3.8 cm -
The works call to mind the fractured understanding of specific events. Enhancing this dissonance is her strategy of both layerings of the silk image and neoprene material and photographic digital collage work, which generate a moiré effect. In this optical illusion, lines and images are superimposed on another, resulting in a strange, wavy pattern. These mixed-media sculptures with varying volumes resemble upholstered furniture or television.
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Emma SafirRaising Glitches III, 2021Digital collage printed on silk and vinyl, spandex, smocking, appliqué, pine, upholstery foam, silk thread, flashe paint57 x 37 x 1 1/2 in
144.8 x 94 x 3.8 cm -
Emma SafirSan Jose 2010, Arnhem 2020, 2022Digital collage printed on silk, neoprene, pine, upholstery foam, silk thread, flashe paint28 x 18 x 1 1/2 in
71.1 x 45.7 x 3.8 cm -
Emma Safir (b. 1990 New York City; Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) received a BFA in 2012 from the Rhode Island School of Design in Printmaking and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in Painting & Printmaking in 2021. She has recently had solo exhibitions in New York City at Baxter St at Camera Club of New York; SHIN HAUS at Shin Gallery; and participated in group exhibitions at Lyles & King, New York, NY; TW Fine Art, Palm Beach, FL; and Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Textiles Art Center in Brooklyn, a participant in the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in Manhattan, and a Keyholder Resident at the Lower East Side Printshop in Manhattan.
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