VANISHING ACT : HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

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COLBY BIRD, DAVID KENNEDY CUTLER, CHRIS DUNCAN, VICTORIA FU & MATT RICH, KARA HAMILTON, SHEREE HOVSEPIAN, DENISE KUPFERSCHMIDT, VIRGINIA LEE MONTGOMERY, FRANCIS PICABIA, ELI PING, BRIE RUAIS, PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA, WILMER WILSON IV

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MAY 4 – JUNE 2, 2019

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Vanishing Act is a group show of works that hint at corporeal presence without fully depicting the body. Visages, floating limbs, hand and foot prints, extrapolated orifices, uninhabited clothing, empty jewelry, and veiled bodies across a variety of media make up the installation. Chosen for their sui generis approach to materials, the group addresses concerns of social structures, loneliness, humanity’s affect on the earth, and formalism to reflect the impact of being and absence.

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Colby Bird (born 1978; Austin, Texas) lives and works in New York, he received an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin; Halsey McKay Gallery, New York; Grice Bench, Los Angeles; Fitzroy, New York; L University Galleries at Texas State University, San Marcos, and has been included in exhibitions at Susan Inlet Gallery, New York, Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles, Digbyland Studio, London, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; Arthouse, Austin, and Hagedorn Foundation, Atlanta. His work is held in prominent private and public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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David Kennedy Cutler (b. 1979, Sandgate, VT ) received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. He has mounted recent solo exhibitions at Halsey Mckay Gallery, NY (2018), Derek Eller Gallery (2017), The Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia in partnership with Art in General (2016). He has recently been included in exhibitions at Cooley Gallery at Reed University, Portland, OR; The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Lyles and King, New York, NY; and the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia.

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Chris Duncan (b.1974, Perth Amboy, NJ) holds an MFA from Stanford University and a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Chris Duncan has held solo exhibitons with Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, Canada; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Halsey McKay, New York, and East Hampton, NY. His work has been included in exhibitions at The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Museum Of Modern Art, NY, New York; De Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA; and The Marjorie Barrick Museum at the University of Las Vegas Nevada. Duncan’s work is held in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art, New York, NY; SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA; The Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and the Arsenal, Montreal, Canada. Outside of his studio practice he organizes events and runs a small artist book press and record label called Land and Sea with his wife Maria Otero. He currently lives and works in Oakland, California.

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Victoria Fu (b. 1978, Santa Monica, CA) received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts; an MA in Art History from the University of Southern California; and a BFA from Stanford University. She was a participant of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Whitney Independent Study Program. Victoria has recently had solo exhibitions at The Orange County Museum of Art, (Santa Ana, CA), University of Contemporary Art, (Tucson, AZ), Cult of Splendor, UC Irvine (Irvine, CA), Marginal Utility (Philadelphia, PA), Flashpoint Gallery, CulturalDC (Washington, DC), Milk of the Eye, Samson Projects (Boston, MA), and Lodestar | Polaris, General Public (Berlin, Germany).

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Matt Rich (b. 1976, Boston MA) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BA from Brown University and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent solo exhibits include J A Zed Zed, Devening Projects and Editions, Chicago, IL, Monster A with Victoria Fu, University Hall Gallery, Boston, MA, Versify, Halsey Mckay Gallery at 56 Henry, New York. Rich’s work has been featured in exhibitions in venues such as Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Project Row Houses, Houston; Samson Projects, Boston; Zevitas/Marcus in Los Angeles; galerie oqbo in Berlin; and BravinLee Programs in New York City. His works are in the permanent collections of List Visual Arts Center at MIT, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Dana Farber Cancer Institute Art Collection in Boston, and Northeastern University in Boston. His work has been written about in publications including Modern Painters, Artforum, Art Papers, and The Boston Globe among others.

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Kara Hamilton (b. 1967, Toronto, Canada) received her MFA from Yale. She has shown extensively in North America and Europe, at such spaces as Salon 94, EFA Project Space, Kate Werble Gallery, New York; Siegel House, Marfa, USA; Taut and Tame, Berlin, Germany; Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg; Art Gallery of Ontario, Cooper Cole, G Gallery, Tatar Gallery, Toronto, Canada. She comprises one half of the curatorial team that is Kunstverein Toronto. Hamilton currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

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Sheree Hovsepian (b. 1974) earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. Recent solo exhibitions include The Altogether, Monique Meloche, Chicago, IL (2018), Higher Pictures, New York (2017) and Halsey Mckay Gallery, East Hampton, NY (2017). Hovsepian’s work was also included in the recent exhibitions Sheree Hovsepian and Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Team Gallery (Bungalow), Los Angeles, CA (2019), Seductive Reduction, CHART Gallery NYC (2019), Stony Island Arts Bank, Chicago IL (2018), Brass Tacks, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2017), Material Gestures, Where Do We Stand, The Drawing Center, NYC (2017). Hovsepian’s work is held in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim Museum, The Bronx Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago and The Studio Museum in Harlem among other institutions. Hovsepian lives and works in New York City.

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Denise Kupferschmidt (b. 1979, Princeton, NJ) lives and works in Queens, NY. Denise received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Recent solo exhibitions have been with Halsey McKay Gallery and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including at BAM, Foxy Productions, Eleven Rivington, Nicole Klagsbrun and Tracey Williams, NY; amongst others. She was an organizer of the itinerant group-show series Apartment Show, has been included in Modern Painters 100 Artists to Watch and was a 2010 NADA Emerging Artist.–

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Virginia Lee Montgomery (b. 1986, Houston, TX) received her MFA in Sculpture from Yale University, 2016, and her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin, 2008. Current engagements include Crash Test, Curator Nicolas Bourriaud, La Panacée, Montpellier, France (2018) and An Unbound Knot in the Wind, Curator Alison Karasyk, CSS Bard, Hessel Museum of Art, NY (2018). Past engagements include Materal Defiance at SculptureCenter, NY (2017), Screening at Harvard Film Archive, MA (2017), SOS Onshore Offshore at Meyohas, NY (2016), Onsite Offsite Parasite, Yale University, CT (2016), Things You Cant Unthink, Walter Phillips Gallery, Canada (2016), and Particle Accelerator Memorial Project, Wright Nuclear Laboratory, CT (2015). She has been awarded residencies at Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory, Coast Time, The Shandaken Project at Storm King and The Vermont Studio Center; she was the recipient of Yale University’s Susan H. Wedon Award and the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship 2016 Nominee in Sculpture.

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Francis Picabia (1879 – 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France and was later associated with Surrealism.

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Eli Ping (b. 1977, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA from Vassar College and his MFA from the University of Illinois. Recent exhibitions of his work include Susan Inglett Gallery, NY, Shoot the Lobster, Luxembourg, Artadia, NY, The Atlantic Conference, Brooklyn. Eli has curated exhibits at Brennan and Griffin.

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Brie Ruais (b. 1982, Southern California) received her BFA from New York University, and her MFA from Columbia University in 2011. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Katzen Center at American University, Washington, DC; Arsenal, Montreal; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Nicole Klagsbrun, NY; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Mesler/Feuer, NY, USA; Lefebrve & Fils, Paris, France. Group exhibitions include The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Maccarone, Sperone Westwater and Rachel Uffner in NY; Night Gallery and Marc Selwyn Fine Arts in Los Angeles, September gallery in Hudson, NY, Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, USA and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium, among others. Ruais is the recipient of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, the Dieu Donne Fellowship, Montello Foundation Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship, The Shandaken Project Residency among others. Ruais currently lives and works in Brooklyn, USA.

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Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982, San Bernadino, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and an MFA in photography from the University of California Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include Team Gallery (New York), Foam Fotografieuseum (Amsterdam, NL), Document (Chicago, IL), Team Bungalow (Los Angeles), Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York), KMAC Museum (Louisville, KY). Forthcoming group exhibitions include The Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Whitney Museum of American Art 2019 Biennial (New York) , Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston, TX). Past group exhibitions include David Zwirner (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), The New Museum, MOCA (Los Angeles). His work is held in the public collections of The Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), The Guggenheim Museum (New York), MOCA (Los Angeles), The Whitney Museum of Art, The MOMA (New York) among other institutions.

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Wilmer Wilson IV (b. 1989 Richmond, VA) received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, 2015. He is a recipient of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship and an American Academy in Rome Affiliated Fellowship. Select institutions that have presented his work include The New Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; American University Museum, Washington, DC; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; and In Flanders Fields Museum, Ieper, Belgium.