Within Without
Eve Ackroyd, Jaqueline Cedar, Robert Otto Epstein, Dan Perkins, Kristen Schiele
Curated by Alex Allenchey
March 19th – May 21st, 2021
Project: ARTspace is pleased to present Within Without, a group exhibition curated by Alex Allenchey that features work by Eve Ackroyd, Jaqueline Cedar, Robert Otto Epstein, Dan Perkins, and Kristen Schiele. The exhibition opens on Friday, March 19th and runs through Friday, May 21st.
When contemplating the past, it can prove surprisingly challenging to look back beyond March, 2020, to remember the life one used to lead. So many of our habits and activities have been cast into question, their essential utility reevaluated, in some cases with the stakes becoming life or death.
Forced into uncertain and indefinite isolation, the precariousness of our interiors became heightened—with domestic spaces coming to signify sealed safety, while public indoor ones became threats, or were prohibited altogether. We were forced to reappraise our lives at home, which suddenly needed to be not only a refuge but in some cases also an office and a classroom, a gym and a restaurant.
Works like Prize and Nope by Kristen Schiele depict a dissolution and alternate fabrication of interior realities, while the paintings Go outside and In the shadows by Jaqueline Cedar, as well as her works on paper, highlight the trepidation with which we approached the outside world, and the encroaching stress of remaining confined. Set within emotional landscapes, Eve Ackroyd’s paintings Drunk Reading and Object, Woman, both made during quarantine, reveal private moments of anxiety as well as the slipperiness of self-definition under prolonged self-examination.
In a short amount of time, routines changed significantly as strict, solid boundaries were established between ourselves and others. The measures we took to protect our physical safety ultimately took an incredible psychic toll, with social connections severed, frayed, or entirely digitally mediated at a time when we needed them most.
Robert Otto Epstein’s portraits on wood blocks depict singular people as composite parts, their gridded forms reminiscent of how we present ourselves in this moment of screen-bound interaction. The abstractions of Dan Perkins, which begin as images of the natural world that are distorted into looping symmetries of pure color, evoke the cold accounting of an abacus, or the reconstitution of cellular structures, or both—life over time.
Within Without looks toward the recent past, at our process of simultaneous, communal disassembly, as well as to the future, when we’ll be tasked with creating new identities from the disparate parts that remain intact. After so much has been lost, who are we in the aftermath? And who do we want to become?
—Alex Allenchey
Eve Ackroyd (b. 1984, United Kingdom) lives and works in London, UK. She studied painting at Chelsea College of Art & Weissensee School of Art in Berlin. Her works have been exhibited at Kapp Kapp (Philadelphia, PA), Assembly Room (New York, NY), AIR Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Bigger Pictures (Los Angeles, LA), and Cob Gallery (London, UK), among others. Her work has been written about for Brooklyn Rail, I-D Magazine, AnOther, Dazed & Confused, Artsy, and Hyperallergic.
Jaqueline Cedar (b. 1985, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from Columbia University in 2009. Recent exhibitions solo shows include Cat Head Press (Indianapolis, IN), Crush Curatorial (New York, NY), Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA), and 106 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Field Projects (New York, NY), The Hole (New York, NY), Underdonk (Brooklyn, NY), Ortega y Gasset (Brooklyn, NY), and Fredericks & Freiser Gallery (New York, NY), among others. Her work has been features in the Huffington Post, New American Paintings, Gorky’s Granddaughter, Painters’ Table, and The Boston Globe. Cedar also runs Good Naked Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
Robert Otto Epstein (b. Pittsburgh, PA) lives and works just outside of New York, NY. He studied philosophy and political science at the University of Pittsburgh and law at the University of Durham in the UK. He has shown widely in the US and Europe, including The Drawing Center (New York, NY), The Hole (New York, NY), Jack Hanley Gallery (New York, NY), Roberts Projects (Los Angeles, LA), Voorkamer Gallery (Lier, Belgium), and Morgan Lehman Gallery (New York, NY), among others. His work has been featured in a number of publications including, The New York Times, ELLE Magazine, VICE, Juxtapoz, The New Criterion, and Dwell Studio, among others. His work is in the corporate collections of Facebook, Fidelity Investments, and The Big Human. Epstein is also responsible for curating a number of exhibitions throughout New York.
Dan Perkins (b. 1988, Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from American University in 2013. His work is held in the collection of the Capital One Corporate Art Collection, Fidelity Investments, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Katzen Museum of American History, as well as in many private collections. His work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Booooooom, Two Coats of Paint, Artsy, ArtMaze Mag, and the Washington Post.
Kristen Schiele lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA from American University and a BA in Visual Arts from Indiana University. Her works on paper and silkscreen graphic novel are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has participated in exhibitions at Nathalie Karg Gallery (New York, NY), Freight + Volume Gallery (New York, NY), Lu Magnus Gallery (New York, NY), Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami, FL), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), And Nancy Margolis Gallery (New York, NY), among many others. Her work has been shown at institutions such as the Torrence Art Museum (Torrence, CA), the Corcoran Museum of Art (Washington, DC), and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (Los Angeles, CA). She has been selected for the Provincetown Work Center Residency, Bronx AIM Artist in the Marketplace, the Workspace Residency Program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, Fountainhead, and Wassaic Art Residencies. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, Berliner Morgenpost, and Modern Painters, among others.
