Kate Levant: ...Which's Ploying the Fans & Nnenna Okore: When all is said and done

Cover: Kate Levant Nacre’ous Composite Vivisection, 2016 (detail)

Kate Levant …Which’s Ploying the Fans

on the wall

Nnenna Okore When all is said and done September 15 - October 29, 2016

Published on the occasion of Kate Levant’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, and Nnenna Okore’s first on the wall installation.

© 2016

Previous Left : Kate Levant Witches Ploying the Fans, 2016 (detail) Previous Right: Nnenna Okore When all is said and done, 2016 (detail)

Kate Levant …Which’s Ploying the Fans Installation view

Kate Levant Witches Ploying the Fans, 2016 Rubber-based ink monoprint, gorgonia ventalina octocoral, synthetic window screening, canvas and thread on nylon spinnaker sail 20 x 50 ½ inches

Essay by Karen Patterson, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, September 2016 In Jane Bennett’s book Vibrant Matter, she defines “thing-power” as the curious ability of certain materials to "animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle.” Although thing-power materialism is a hypothetical, the concept is an attempt to depict the nonhumanity that flows around and through humans. In her recognition that people are not the only significant factors affecting and influencing us, Bennett calls for deep appreciation and empathy for the materials that impact the ways in which we navigate this world.

What are the implications of recognizing that everything – from rocks to twigs – is alive and influencing our decisions?

For both Kate Levant and Nnenna Okore, materials found in the landscape are fundamental to their art practice. Intuitive, deeply in tune with the things that surround them, both artists honor the unmistakable powers of the materials they select and opt to use as conduits, channeling the material’s energy from the landscape, through the studio and onto the gallery walls. For both these artists, the entities they choose to work with are crystallizations of experiences, everything is in process, constantly undergoing transformation, continually experiencing change until at last the piece, the moment, is complete. To Levant and Okore, the world can be seen as an interwoven web of materials, all affecting each other, competing, forming alliances, initiating new processes and dissipating others.

For Nnenna Okore and her works, When all is said and done, 2016, and Body Language, 2015, the vibrant material is burlap.

Of this choice, she says, “At every juncture of my process, I literally feel its pulse. It starts by shedding its fibers, as soon as it is picked up. Then its distinctive and earthy smell fills the air. Once in contact with the dye bath, its strings take on a kinky and contorted state. It dries crisp and veiny. The burlap continues to morph at the encounter of a new space.

It eagerly responds to twists and turns; the lighting and air flow. It takes over—diving, navigating and cascading though the space with dramatic elegance, fragility and grace. It breathes new life.”

The red and black fibrous installation in the window is the artist’s rumination on the cycle of life and death. Okore celebrates the ritual of aging with this work, as the black color denotes dying and decay, the red vein-like threads emerges through the skeletal form to signal the body and re-birth.

Both artists’ works were only resolved in the gallery space during the final hours of installation.

For Levant, chance and happenstance pervade the materials with which she works. The unpredictability of finding the perfect material to use and further letting the material persuade her creative process is a seemingly disruptive and rebellious act, rising against the pursuit of false structure and order. In some ways, Levant’s works announce an escape from robotic processes of the world and favor tactility, chaos and emotion—emphasizing the magic and vulnerability in everyday life.

Levant contemplates the materials she selects deeply, such that it is selected to be the anchoring aspect – the constant – of her intuitive process. For this exhibition, a nylon spinnaker sail is the subject through which Levant contemplates larger issues and is featured prominently throughout the gallery.

Nnenna Okore Body Language, 2015 Burlap, dye, wire 72 x 96 x 25 inches

As she says, “I like to think of my work as an equation – like solving for x – in which we need to place something real and stable so that the chaos has something to respond to. I feel like this work lives on the risky edge of belief systems, nothing tells me to believe in the sail as having those powers, but there is something inherent in that material that persuades me to make.”

In [a ~play~] Broomstick’s Periodstracic Transitional Device_lead_Verdant Ventalina’d Ventilatorr, Levant employs the sail and other materials to think about climate change, about regeneration, about second lives and about perspective. The list of materials reads as a witch’s brew: nylon spinnaker sail, electrical tape, gorgonian ventalina octocoral, steel wire, solder and melamine chopsticks. Collected and acquired in what Levant describes as, “the magic of the moment,” they are assembled to be appreciated as if an aerial view of a landscape or a detailed look through a microscope. At once cellular and from a distance, Levant’s trickery destabilizes us.

In Nacre’ous ))cellum, the work is more introspective and intimate. The iridescent surface reminds us of precious pearls or a moonlit sky.

It suggests a projection screen on which the movie is just coming into focus or a mirror with an abstracted reflection. Levant draws us into the light and asks us to project our own imagery and ideas on the material’s surface.

Materials are alive because of their capacities to affect change, to have consequences, to shape relationships and to say something.

Humans aren’t autonomous subjects; we are composed by a complex web of active components and resources. For Levant and Okore, the materials they select serve as tactile memory markers, stemming from their experiences and connections to their surroundings. They then weld, bend, dye, assemble, until the finished work speaks back.

Kate Levant …Which’s Ploying the Fans Installation view

Kate Levant Nacre’ous Composite Vivisection, 2016 Aluminum foil, aerosol adhesive, drafting paper, silicone discs, plastic laminate, rubber-based ink monoprint, oil based polyurethane, nylon spinnaker sail, and aerosol enamel on paper 70 x 77 inches

Kate Levant A Rubbing of Iridescent Must, 2016 Graphite, Sicilian mold, plastic laminate, aerosol enamel on vinyl 16 x 9 ½ inches

Kate Levant Cane’ic loop’Evasive Dominance, 2016 Aluminum foil, paper, aerosol adhesive, oil-based polyurethane, graphite, Nellcor Maxa SPo2 adhesive sensor, drafting paper, on nylon spinnaker sail 92 x 42 x 4 inches

Kate Levant [a ~ploy~] Broomstick’s Bamboo’d’Stick, 2016 Tape, hemp rope, plastic, misc. hardware, and a broomstick 47 ½ x 5 x 2 inches

Kate Levant an Affair, 2016 Graphite, drafting paper, plastic laminate, rubber-based ink monoprint on nylon spinnaker sail 18 ½ x 12 inches

Kate Levant [a ~ploy~] Propel’dChloe Platform Failure, Trans’for Asiatic, 2016 Gorgonia ventalina octocoral, left wedge platform shoe, melamine chopsticks, steel wire, solder, misc. metal hardware on plastic 63 x 17 x 4 inches

Kate Levant [a ~ploy~] Broomstick’s Periostracic Transitional Device_lead_Verdant Ventalina’d Ventilatorr, 2016 Rubber-based ink monoprint on nylon spinnaker sail, electrical tape, gorgonia ventalina octocoral, steel wire, solder, and melamine chopsticks. Foil, aerosol adhesive, polyurethane, aerosol enamel, rubber tubing, wood rungs, steel wire, solder, misc. metal hardware, melamine chopsticks, and a broomstick 82 x 47 x 12 inches

Kate Levant Nacre’ous 00cellum, 2016 Aluminum foil, aerosol adhesive, graphite, plastic laminate, nylon spinnaker sail, ink and oil-based polyurethane on paper.

63 ½ x 54 inches

Kate Levant Blac’ Rhino Propellation, 2016 Rubber-based ink monoprint and thread on nylon spinnaker sail 19 ½ x 24 ½ inches

Kate Levant Ocular Mobile, 2016 Broken lock, steel wire, sodder, silver leaf, broken platform shoe buckle, aerosol enamel, crazy glue 21 x 5 x 4 inches

Kate Levant …Which’s Ploying the Fans Installation view

Kate Levant (b. 1983 in Chicago, lives in New York) received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2006, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2010. She held a two-year residency position at the Rijkskademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2012 & 2013 and most recently was a 2016 artist-in-residence at Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, NY. Levant’s solo exhibitions include, Collicaligreggi Gallery, Catania, Italy (2015); Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015); Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf, Germany (2014); Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY (2014), and her first solo show with moniquemeloche in 2013. She was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and in 2010, the Los Angeles-based Nomadic Division commissioned her site-specific performance work on Flagler Memorial Island, Miami Beach. Levant’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art Forum, Art in America, Art Review, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Mousse Magazine, Nero, Art Ltd., Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Chicago New City, Detroit Metro Times. Levant was awarded the Fondazione Ettore Fico Prize at Artissima 2015 in Torino, Italy. This fall she’ll exhibit concurrent solo shows at moniquemeloche in Chicago and Susanne Hilberry in Detroit, followed by a presentation of works alongside Sanford Biggers and Nate Young for moniquemeloche at Artissima 2016, curated by Rossella Farinotti.

Previous: Nnenna Okore When all is said and done, 2016 Burlap, dye, wire and yarn 10 x 25 x 3 feet overall

Nnenna Okore When all is said and done, 2016 (detail)

Nnenna Okore When all is said and done, 2016 (detail)

Next: Nnenna Okore Body Language, 2015 (detail)

Nnenna Okore (b. 1975 in Australia, raised in Nigeria) has received international acclaim for installations in which she reconfigures organic or discarded materials into abstract, richly textured forms of extraordinary range and nuance. She earned her BA in 1999 from the University of Nigeria where she studied with acclaimed sculptor El Anatsui. Okore went on to receive her MA and MFA at the University of Iowa, in 2004 and 2005 respectively. At present, the artist is a Professor of Art at Chicago’s North Park University, where she teaches sculpture. She was a 2012 recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award, and has partaken in artist residencies for Jean Paul Blachere Foundation, Apt, France (2010), Art Omi International Residency, NY (2006), and SFAI Residency, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM (2004).

Her solo exhibitions include, Nkata, Krannert Museum of Art, University of Urbana-Champaign, IL (2015), On the Brink, Elmhurst Art Museum, NY (2015), and Akaraka: What will be, Art Twenty One, Lagos, Nigeria (2013). Okore has participated in group exhibitions at Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL (2015), Museu Afro Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015), Spelman Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2014), Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Art (MoCADA), NY (2013), and at the 29th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2010).

moniquemeloche was founded in October 2000 with an inaugural exhibition titled Homewrecker at Meloche’s home, and officially opened to the public in May 2001. Working with an international group of emerging artists in all media, the gallery presents conceptually challenging installations in Chicago and at art fairs internationally with an emphasis on curatorial and institutional outreach.

2154 W. Division, Chicago, IL 60622 p 773.252.0299 www.moniquemeloche.com