EXHIBITION IMAGES | PRESS RELEASE
LISHA BAI & CHRIS BOGIA – HERE COMES THE SUN | June 3 – July 3, East Hampton, NY
Halsey McKay is pleased to announce Here Comes the Sun, a collaborative exhibition of works by Lisha Bai and Chris Bogia. Long time admirers of each other’s practices since their graduate school days in the early 2000s, Lisha and Chris approached this exhibition as a loving response to one another’s recent work. Bai’s sun-soaked windows and doorway, rendered in soft textiles, create the interior architecture of an imagined seaside room that surrounds Bogia’s work. Bogia’s wall pieces reference Bai’s sunsets, and Bai’s Bonsai in the Window depicts one of Bogia’s sculptures as it casts a shadow of on the floor of the room. A unified magic hour palette spans many of the works, further enveloping the viewer in the artists’ seaside fantasy.
The show’s title, Here Comes the Sun, makes reference to the 1969 Beatles song of the same name. In both the song and the beach house interiors suggested here, the sun’s arrival is one of hope and optimism after a cold and unsmiling winter. Both artists have found inspiration by their time spent at the beach. Bai windows draw from the traditional architecture of Shinnecock Hills homes and views overlooking the Peconic Bay. For Bogia, who spends his summers on Fire Island, the textures in the work are reminiscent of a summer beach house – burlap, stained wood, brushy acrylic, and glossy lacquer.
“My work sits between contemporary art and decorative art, courting and resisting both worlds simultaneously,” says Bogia. For Here Comes the Sun, Bogia has made two new bonsai trees from an ongoing series, as well as four framed wall works. “The framed works in this exhibition are my interpretation of “beach house art.” Embracing the cliché of sunset paintings and rustic vacation home textures, Bogia’s vision is made fresh by distilling what is most essential within his signature geometric abstraction and addition of sculptural elements that often move beyond the frame.
Lisha Bai’s tapestries playfully juxtapose the idea of a curtain while simultaneously evoking a seaside landscape. She knowingly plays off of modernist tropes of illusionism and trompe l’oeil with an interest in traditional Korean stitching. “While the new curtain pieces are a shift from my sand works, I have always been interested in illusionism and materiality in painting,” says Bai. “I want to create the illusion of a pictorial space while calling attention to the works in the show’s materiality. I’m fascinated by how one is often lost in favor of the other, then toggles back.”
Lisha Bai lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited at Deanna Evans Projects, DC Moore, Halsey McKay, Klaus von Nichtssagend, Fortnight Institute, and National Academy of Art, among other venues. She holds a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Yale School of Art.
Chris Bogia received his BFA at New York University and MFA from Yale University. He currently lives in Queens, NY. Recent exhibitions include a 2021 public project with Art in Buildings in NYC, a solo presentation at Mrs. in 2022, public art installations on Fishers Island, NY (2022), Foreland Catskills NY (2023), and a group exhibition at Perrotin, Paris 2022. Bogia is the co-founder of Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR), the first LGBTQ artist residency in the world, and was FIAR’s acting director from 2011- 2020. He is currently an instructor of sculpture at New York University. Bogia is represented by Mrs.