“Deep States” Exhibition

“Deep States” Exhibition

Theodore:Art

This event has ended.

“In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.”
― Guy Debord

Theodore:Art presents Deep States, an exhibition informed by and circling ideas of hidden powers, control, paranoia, and distrust of the powers that be.

Although the term “Deep State” has been applied throughout the 20th and 21st Century to various regimes in multiple countries, as a basis of comprehension we will start from the idea that if the Deep State is the unelected government, then by definition it is an undemocratic government. The artists herein suggest projections of that unelected power that affects our lives. Their responses are mysterious, documentary, hallucinatory, anxious, dreading, pissy, contemplative, and ultimately subjective. The impossibility of visually defining the identity and limits of a mythical entity makes the act of attempting to do so both heroic and sisyphean. The Deep States elude the grasp of the mind, the long arm of the law, and the influence of societal norms.

Berwald Borgsjo communicates via fax from an undisclosed location. His work has been exhibited in select copy rooms and recycling bins across North America.

A painter and arts writer, Sharon Butler is widely known as the founder of Two Coats of Paint, a project which
includes an influential art blog, an artist residency and other initiatives. She has shown work at Theodore:Art
(2016, 2018) and SEASON (Seattle). Thanks to the generosity of the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy
Program, Butler maintains a studio in Brooklyn, under the Manhattan Bridge. She has received grants and
residencies from Creative Capital/The Warhol Foundation’s Art Writers Program, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,
Yaddo, and Counterproof Press. She currently teaches at Cornell University and the New York Academy of Art. Her exhibitions at Theodore in 2016 and 2018 have received critical attention from Time Out NY, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, and New York Magazine.

Billy Jacobs (b. 1985 Boston, Massachusetts) received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and his MFA from New York University in 2017. He has exhibited at Marlborough Chelsea, New York; FALSE FLAG, Queens, NY; Theodore: Art, Brooklyn, NY; RAG Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Jacobs has also participated in the SWAB Barcelona Art Fair. In 2019 his installation, House Arrest, at NADAHouse on Governor’s Island was reviewed by The Art Newspaper.

Peter Krashes lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford (1987) and Middlebury College (1985). Along with the James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, solo exhibitions include University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL; Theodore: Art, Brooklyn, NY; Coop, Nashville, TN; Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY; Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY; and White Columns, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, NY; and Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris, France. He has taught in numerous places such as Cooper Union School of Art, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and American University. Krashes is a recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant. Reviews of his work have appeared in the New York Times, Time Out New York, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and the New Yorker. His most recent exhibition at Theodore, “Contact!”, received a review in the New York Times. For the last sixteen years his community organizing has focused on a wide-range of issues in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Alix Lambert’s feature length documentary The Mark of Cain was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, received an honorable mention from the French Association of Journalism, and aired on Nightline. She has directed and produced two other feature length documentaries; Bayou Blue (made in collaboration with David McMahon) and Mentor. Lambert has exhibited her fine art work to international critical acclaim, showing in The Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Georges Pompidou Center, and the Kwangju Biennnale, to name a few. She is the author of five books: Mastering The Melon, The Silencing, Russian Prison Tattoos, Crime, and Courtroom.

Lara Nasser (b. 1991 Sacramento, California) received a BFA from the American University of Beirut 2013 and an MFA from Pratt in 2015. She participated in Condo Athens at The BreederGallery, Athens in 2019. . Since then she has exhibited internationally and throughout the United States at Non-Fiction Gallery, Savannah; Beirut Contemporary Art Fair; Pierogi Boiler Room, Brooklyn; Galerie Nikki Diana Marquardt, Paris; Takt Kunstprojecteraum, Berlin; KUP Gallery, Athens; H Gallery, Los Angeles; Bullet Space, New York; Alfa Gallery, Miami; among several others. Her work is included in the Imago Mundi collection of Luciano Benetton. Her last solo exhibition at Meredith Rosen Gallery in New York was reviewed in ARTFORUM. Her second solo exhibition with Meredith Rosen Gallery is on view through November 4, and has been reviewed by Whitewall Magazine. Nasser lives and works in Brooklyn.

Michelle Vaughan received her BFA at UCLA. Her art practice focuses on political or historical subjects. She examines topics and then deconstructs and reinterprets the material through work in a variety of media — drawing, installation, letterpress printing, among others. Vaughan has had solo shows at Dumbo Art Center and the South Street Seaport, where she was awarded fiscal sponsorship from the New York Foundation of the Arts for Sea Warriors: A Public Art Project, in 2009. During the summer of 2018, her ongoing project “Generations,” a deep dive into the degeneration by inbreeding of the Spanish Habsburgs, was shown in solo exhibitions at Galería Trinta and the Universidade Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Her most recent exhibition at Theodore, “A Movement of Women” received media attention from Blake Gopnik, Artnet News, and Two Coats of Paint. Vaughan was born in Anaheim, California and lives in New York City.

Oliver Wasow lives and works in Rhinebeck, NY. He received a BA from Hunter College and a Master’s Degree from the Transart Institute in Austria. Wasow has had many one person exhibitions, including shows at Theodore:Art, Josh Baer Gallery, Janet Borden Gallery, Tom Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, and the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. His work has been exhibited in many national and international group shows, such as ‘Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Image World,’ at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC, and ‘The Photography of Invention,’ at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. His photographs have been acquired by prominent private and public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC and The Milwaukee Art Museum.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing

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