Curated by Amanda Hunt
December 3, 2017 - January 14, 2018
Opening reception Sunday, December 3 from 6-8pm
JEFFREY STARK
88 East Broadway #B11 (basement level)
New York, NY 10002
jeffreystark.nyc
Utilizing Jeffrey Stark’s store-front architecture and 24-hour surveillance camera, emerging artists and first-time collaborators Cudelice Brazelton and Jacob Mason-Macklin explore intersections of display and visibility through a transformation of this diminutive gallery. In a site-specific, collagist installation consisting of found and original photographs and other printed matter, Bounty shifts Jeffrey Stark into a space that functions as a hideaway or sanctuary meant to house subverted depictions of anonymous black bodies. Symbols which reference the overarching narrative of the show are cut, scorched, applied and displaced from their original surfaces as clues throughout the immersive visual landscape.
Bounty is a view into a kind of subjectivity—it combines flier and barbershop culture taken directly from their Ohioan context, black malehood, and a pervasive sense of tenderness. Where Brazelton deftly burns and singes onto the walls or the figure, paralleling flesh for flesh, Mason-Macklin accumulates, building surface and meaning. Brazelton's marks collapse the body and commercial space into decorative zones of display; Mason-Macklin's reworked posters balance visibility and obscurity, weaving images of lost dogs and family photos to create what he terms "visual journals," both real and imagined. Paired together for the first time, these two artists have brought an undeniable urgency to a representative body.
Cudelice Brazelton (b. 1991) was born in Dallas, TX and currently lives in Frankfurt, Germany. His work manipulates textiles, collage, industrial hardware, cosmetic products, and depictions of the black body to explore the durability of distressed forms and surfaces. He has been in various group exhibitions including Out/er.Space: Apprehensions of Nothingness at Chowaiki & Co. in Manhattan, Midwest Mindset at the UT Center for Visual Arts in Toledo, VOX X: Present Tense at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Village of/ for things at In The Pines in Jackson Wyoming, and Impossible Geometries at Field Projects in New York City. He is currently studying at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He has attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, ACRE Residency and Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency. Brazelton is a co-founder of MINT Collective based in Columbus Ohio.
Jacob Mason-Macklin (b. 1995) was born in Columbus, OH and currently resides in New York City. His work weaves drawing, collage, found material, and personal imagery to explore notions of miscegenation through shared spaces. Mason-Macklin has shown in multiple spaces including The Bermuda Project in Ferguson, MO; Pearl Conard Gallery in Mansfield, OH, The Columbus Metropolitan Library, the Beeler Gallery at the Columbus College of Art and Design, and MINT Gallery in Columbus, OH. His work has been published in Columbus Alive , the Columbus College of Art and Design catalog , and VICE: The Creators Project . Mason-Macklin is currently finishing an artist-in-residence program at MASS MoCA and was a 2016 fellow of the Yale-Norfolk Summer School of Art.
