Devon Dikeou “Here Is New York (E.B. WHITE)”

James Fuentes LLC

poster for Devon Dikeou “Here Is New York  (E.B. WHITE)”
[Image: Devon Dikeou "Rush Hour Grand Central Station" black and white photograph, (1988)]

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James Fuentes presents Devon Dikeou’s forthcoming solo exhibition HERE IS NEW YORK (E.B. WHITE). This is the artist’s second exhibition at the gallery.

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something […] Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.”

—E. B. White, Here is New York

In 1988 I moved from the West Village to Soho. 508 Broadway to be precise. In that in-between phase of staying in one apartment and signing a lease for another—my first studio—I walked back and forth, Village to Soho, Soho to Village. The meandering route eventually led to Broadway, and what a route. It’s truly an urban canyon and originally an Indian path from the Upper West Side to Wall Street—which was an actual wall BTW … protecting those settlers from the hostile unknown. Walking those various, well-patterned routes, at different times of day, the urban landscape changed, evening to morning, with the solace of afternoon in between. Businesses and residences open or closed, were protected or vulnerable, or maybe neither. I began to recognize these facades as individuals, but more than that, not really as barriers, which is what they are designed for, and rather resting moments, almost modernist paintings or sculptures that culture crafted. Their nuances were studied and recorded in those three weeks of in between of the Village and Soho. And that record became the first body of work out of the “gate” as an aspiring young MFA graduate. I always thought of them as an “in-between,” a segue, not a security system. Rather than a blocking mechanism, the gates were something that held the space for just a while. These gates’ compositions were based on real situations, measured and replicated. No locks were shown, the gates were closed, but left open as if you could raise the gate and see the white cube of Art Oz behind. Some people did. Especially with the kiosk. So these three gates revisit that time, and sorta all the different faces of New Yorkers that E. B. White describes. One home grown, another the day trader, and one the transplanted permanent fixture. Three New Yorkers, three gates from 1989/1990.

—Devon Dikeou


Devon Dikeou (b. 1963, Denver, CO) lives and works in Austin, Denver, and New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include “Tricia Nixon: Summer of 1973,” Futura, Prague (2018); “‘Pray For Me’-Pope Francis I,” James Fuentes, New York City (2017); “Please,” Outcasts Incorporated, Paris (2015); “Between the Acts: Virginia Woolf,” Nada Art Fair, Miami (2014); “Pray For Me,” Nada Art Fair, New York City (2014); and “Please”, The Contemporary, Austin (2013). Recent group exhibitions include “Group Exhibition,” James Fuentes LLC, New York City (2017); “Foundation Barbin Presents Redeux (Sort of),” Kai Matsumiya, New York City (2016); “Inhabiting Ten Eyck,” Storefront Ten Eyck, New York City (2014); “Game Changer,” Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO (2014); and “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star” at New Museum, New York City (2013). Her retrospective “Mid-Career Smear,” curated by Cortney Lane Stell, at Dikeou Collection is forthcoming in 2019. Devon Dikeou is the founder, editor and publisher of zingmagazine, and a co-founder and curator of The Dikeou Collection in Downtown Denver.

Media

Schedule

from September 08, 2018 to October 07, 2018

Opening Reception on 2018-09-08 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Devon Dikeou

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