Midnight Murmurs: Janaye Brown, Nicole Coson, Dickon Drury, Masako Miki, Emma Safir, Mikey Yates

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. 

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.

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. 

 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.

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. 

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.