“INTERSTITIAL AGENCY” Opens at ATHICA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Lauren Bradshaw / (678) 787-9382 / laurenbradshawart@gmail.com
The Structure Nexus, WORKS BY HEATHER BAUMBACH, BROOKE DAY, THEO TROTTER, SAM SHAMARD, HUAN LAPLANTE, JESSICA SWANK TO BE EXHIBITED AT ATHICA IN ATHENS, GA.
Exhibition Dates: March 29th – May 1, 2025
Reception: 4:00 PM-6:00 PM, March 29th, 2025
ATHICA & Zero Space Collective present “Interstitial Agency,” an exhibition of sculpture and photographs. The exhibition is curated by Lauren Bradshaw.
This exhibition exists at the intersection of materiality and corporeality, utilizing the fragmented, extended, damaged, and repaired body to depict ideas of autonomy and resilience. Qualities of mutability and ephemerality describe the tensions felt within interstitial transitions including the liminal spaces between physical bodily states, manipulation of materials, corporeality and consciousness. Maintaining physical agency and cognitive autonomy within these spaces subverts stagnation and allows for adaptation and reconstruction. These artists possess a refined attunement to materials that allows delicate nuances in surface and subtle relationships in form.
These artists do not use their materials as a means to create only images of the body, but rather the materials themselves are a source of corporeality. The works vary in their degree of abstraction but all ultimately allude to organs, skin, bones, hair, or clothing. Cyclical themes of growth and decay or damage and mending are present throughout the work both conceptually and materially. A palette of bruises, blood, scabs, and other abject references break the boundary between the internal and external body.
The soft forms of these works are complemented by their surfaces which often reference skin as a repository of haptic memory. Theo Trotter states that his work “references the trans body as a palimpsest through marks of transformation and trauma.” His work describes transformation as a “necessary and transcendent, but simultaneously painful experience by addressing physical harm to the body, the injury of forced femininity, and the ways that memory is recorded in the body.” Huan LaPlante’s work “explores the construction and impermanence of the self through a Queer Buddhist lens”, utilizing “figures devoid of sex or gender that gesture desperation, confusion, and tenderness.” Themes of gender and racial identity inevitably permeate the conceptual content of these works as they are representative of our human physicality.
ATHICA is located at 675 Pulaski St STE 1200, Athens, GA 30601. Gallery hours are Wed & Thurs 4-6pm, Fri 4:30-6:30, and Sat & Sun 1-6pm.