DISEMBODIED
Jan 19 – Mar 9, 2023
Nicodim Gallery
New York, USA

DISEMBODIED builds and continues conversations around the violence, ecstasy, and epiphany within out-out-body experiences as-seen from the perspective of those on the ground – the leaps of faith we take to believe those who say their souls depart while their bodies remain. The works in the exhibition cover a wide swath of allegorical and tangible disembodied states, including the spiritual, the telegraphic, the psychedelic, the dissociative-induced, artificial intelligences, and alien encounters.

The first time I took acid was the first time I kissed a boy. I was twelve, he was fifteen. He held it on his tongue, I touched mine to his, and then we took turns trading tongues and mouths back-and-forth, back-and-forth. It wasn’t long (or it could have been days) before my spirit left my body, and I was watching my hands caress his neck, his tug at my shirt and pull my hair. What would my friends say if they saw my body now? What would my parents think? Is this fun? Is it frightening? I telegraph all of these questions back to myself from hundreds of miles above, but my face, still on earth, remains locked to his. I hear it sigh with pleasure. […]

I clean myself up as best I can at a local shelter, enough to convince a cabbie passing-through that I’m a stranded tourist. I have to see my wife and children. My scar palpitates at an increasing tempo as we approach our house, as the fare rises exponentially. I have no money. I cannot afford this. Fireworks detonate in my head, and for a fraction of a second I dissociate. I am the car, I am the asphalt, I am a suburban lawn. A carousel of lights jar me back into my body. It’s a police siren. My wife is crying on the sidewalk, surrounded by men in uniform, two small children screaming beside her. There is blood on my shirt, arms, and hands.

–Selected excerpts from Out of Body: The Bortz Metzger Memoirs
R. Driblette, editor
Penguin Books Ltd, 2002

Artists
Jeanine Brito / Joshua Hagler / Ho Jae Kim / Rae Klein / Yoora Lee / Laurens Legiers / Tali Lennox / Jorge Peris / Mosie Romney / Nicola Samori / Krista Louise Smith / Nadia Waheed

Curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS & EVENTS
  • 1 a 1 Affinità
    Nov 22, 2023 – Feb 29, 2024
    ON House Milano
    Milan, Italy

    1 a 1 Affinità is a group show celebrating the relationship between different artistic expressions and their surrounding context. The exhibition takes place at ON House Milano: a charming location in the heart of Milano, which used to be the Azucena workshop of Architect Caccia Dominioni.

    The combination of space, artwork, and the artworks between them invites the audience to discover, through research and observation, that “spark” of affinity generated by perception.

    The path follows the thin line that defines different artistic languages, such as figurative art and abstract art, but also performance, photography, NFT, happening, video and installation. And everything with the utmost respect to the historical heritage and design purpose of the house.

    This was, in fact, the toughest challenge for the curators Anna Kessler and Anna Niutta. They looked for the harmony within different poetics, and created a unique and unexpected domestic experience. An experience deeply related to the visible.

    Starting from the “Sleeping Girl” (yes, she will be actually sleeping in the bedroom of the house), the exhibition reveals a path through memories and people, mysteries and objects and colors and hopes. And in fact, isn’t the bed the one, true realm of imagery and imagination, dreams and visualizations?

    Every night, as we lay our day down, we practice the art of letting go. We leave our conscious thoughts, our rational mind behind, and we agree to see, and be seen  –  we accept to yield control. And as we do that, we gift ourselves to the domain of imagery  –  key and vehicle to those intimate, submerged places and spaces. At night, it is instinct and imagery that guide our experience.

    Research on the visible is a challenge to observation directed to the observer. There certainly is a real world that we know, but how much of this real world is exhausted in our sensory experience?

    Through the dialogue between works, the observer discovers similarities between different languages that ultimately prove to be distant only in appearance. Different artistic means manage to generate, through perception, a living impression in continuous dialogue with the observer.

    The common features, or affinities, between the different forms of expression appear very clear at times: the figurative often finds itself drawing from elements that are not properly its own, and the non-figurative struggles to disregard sensory reality that is also perhaps only an illusion.

    To what degree is our sensory perception conditioned by our inner state and to what extent is it – instead – influenced by our surroundings?

    The show will be featuring the following artists: Michele Dal Bosco, Louise Daniel, Giovanni De Benedetto, Laura Grinberga, Alessandro Grimoldieu, Rosanna Iob, Rebecca Loro, Guenda Nocentini, Carolina Pozzi, Maddalena Tesser, Maria Giovanna Zanella. With the precious contribution of Annalisa Iob. Everything was made possible by the vision of Fabio Tacchinardi.

    Curated by Anna & Anna
    On House Milano, Via Passione 8, Milan, Italy
    Vernissage by invitation only
    For more information: art@onhousemilano.com