TRACES by thekreegermuseum

CURATED BY SARAH TANGUY

The Kreeger Museum Washington, DC

FOREWORD David and Carmen Kreeger were passionate and generous patrons of the arts. In addition to serving on the Boards of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera, David Kreeger was President and Chairman of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Carmen Kreeger served on the Board of the National Museum of African Art. The Kreegers encouraged, appreciated, and supported Washington area artists. They strengthened their contemporary holdings with works by Sam Gilliam, Simmie Knox, William Christenberry, Thomas Downing, Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Ed McGowin, and Albert Stadler. The Kreegers also established arts awards at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Catholic University. David and Carmen Kreeger were aware of the social significance of contemporary artists as visual chroniclers of their time. They supported artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; practices, and routinely shared their work with the public. Beyond enriching their own lives with art, they had the vision and generosity to share that love with others. I am pleased to honor the Kreeger legacy of supporting Washington contemporary artists with this exhibition: TRACES, curated by Sarah Tanguy. Tanguy, an independent curator and arts writer, was a Curator for Arts and Embassies for 15 years and previously organized The Kreeger Museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s twentieth anniversary exhibition, K@20. She has steered this exhibition, conceived of in 2017, through many unforeseen delays. Unflagging in her enthusiasm and energy, her devotion to this exhibition has been truly remarkable and I am most grateful. The eight outstanding artists she selected from the Mid-Atlantic region have all contributed significant works, and the powerful and thought-provoking exhibition she has created will long be remembered. I welcome Billy Friebele, Roxana Alger Geffen, Rania Hassan, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Sebastian Martorana, Antonio McAfee, Brandon Morse, and Johab Silva to the Museum and thank them for their participation in this exhibition. Installing this show in the midst of a pandemic, with all of the social distancing and masking requirements that entailed, has required resilience and no small amount of patience. I am grateful to these artists for filling our galleries and grounds with their dynamic and inspiring works. Their artworks speak to our society at a time of great vulnerability, inviting reflection and offering solace and hope. Finally, thank you to my amazing staff for their commitment and enthusiasm and to my Board of Trustees for their support and encouragement. Helen Chason Director The Kreeger Museum

TRACES by Sarah Tanguy

Can anything or anyone ever really disappear? The eight artists in TRACES delve headlong into this existential question with an urgency and, ultimately, an optimism that transcends current circumstance. In seeking to shed light on possible futures, they search the past for clues and take stock of the present; their eyes wide open to the many socio-political challenges afoot. The word “trace” has its origin in the Latin word tractus, “a drawing or tract,” and the stem trahere, “to pull or to draw.” In Middle English, “trace” was first recorded as signifying “a path that someone or something takes.” With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the word has added meaning. Not only does the act or state it suggests entail yesterday and today, but also tomorrow, in the sense of tracking a subject and predicting an outcome. Billy Friebele, Roxana Alger Geffen, Rania Hassan, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Sebastian Martorana, Antonio McAfee, Brandon Morse, and Johab Silva operate in this liminal zone of an uncertain world in flux. For them, time ceases to be a linear proposition, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The narratives they spin are filled with spatial ripples, shifts, and blurs. Their use of juxtaposition and overlap creates dynamic tension as they negotiate discord and balance in their quest to reclaim, reconnect, and reimagine. While a similar intent courses throughout the exhibition, the artists’ own inspirations and methods are where personal differences and interpersonal exchange occur. Seeing themselves as collaborators with their source material, the artists set off, buoyed by their intuition, reason, and above all, passion. Billy Friebele, Brandon Morse, and Rania Hassan engage dynamical systems in the physical and the social spheres. Their shared pursuit of experimentation and direct observation is reminiscent of the scientific method. The translation of sound into visual form fuels Friebele’s exploration of the echo chamber and tunnel vision in new works that harken back to a 1671 drawing by Samuel Moreland for a speaking trumpet. Outdoors in the Sculpture Garden, Nero Plays a Fiddle tackles climate change with allusions to both the tyrannical Roman emperor and the current U.S. leadership. Using the energy of the sun, the finely tuned instrument of disparate parts and found objects produces two sonic loops in real time: a foreboding drone when a motion sensor triggers a solar-charged motor to rub an upright bass string inside a ventilation tube; and a varying, two-note sequence when a windshield wiper motor, wired to a solar panel, strikes two strings held in tension by a suspended oil drum. Indoors, Friebele shows four drawings on inked mirrors. Inspired by

the phonautograph, the earliest known sound recorder, they trace patterns evoking sound waves on blackened surfaces with a stylus, revealing hypnotic fields of intersecting circles and vibrating distortions of the viewer’s reflection. Together, these works become present-day echo-locators to consider our cacophonous social media and fragile environment, as well as the solace of natural atmospherics. In Morse’s multi-channel generative video and sound installation, the artist lays bare the state of the imperiled ecosphere in five haunting scenes, running on software, algorithms, and codes of his making. For him, studying how data and human systems compare and shape one another is of primary importance. Projected directly on a gallery wall, Ambient Distress in the Thicket features a spare and anonymous landscape in shades of black and white. At first, total darkness reigns. Then a chilling dirge begins, as a spectral grove rises slowly in our direction. Soon mysterious flying objects, or what Morse calls “particulates,” join in at raking diagonals. The following segments, all punctuated by brief interludes of darkness, trace the enveloping cycle of emergence and entropy from shifting perspectives and depths of field, in steady, unrelenting motion. We experience ever-thinning rows of leafless trees until we are left with a near abstract tangle of felled trunks pierced by a few spiky branches. A bleak ode to lost beauty, the work also calls for heightened awareness, as it asks who is being dispossessed and from what, while whispering that, perhaps, it’s not too late to change tract. While Friebele and Morse learned to play music at a young age, Hassan’s mother taught her knitting, and friends later reintroduced her to that muscle memory. Needlework, along with math and design, continues to drive her meditative process that probes connectivity and the exchange of energy. Linking all three levels of the Museum’s staircase, Liminality knits an interstitial web out of silk, linen, and bamboo string, reinforced with copper and steel threads. The core shape is a circle that is cut on one side, rotated and flipped at its center on the main level landing, creating a mirror reflection similar to “as above, so below,” the Hermitic phrase for the reflection between the astral plane and earthly matters. The ethereal installation gains dimension with some 40,000 ladder-like stitches that twist and stretch out to the railing. The warm palette is equally site-responsive, from the saffron color, referencing the red carpet, to the beige, drawn from the travertine and wall fabric . The whole creates an immersive experience as the organic form evolves with each change in vantage. Akin to trees that join earth and sky, Liminality is about threshold, the flow of air and light, and the passages, both seen and unseen, that permeate our lives.

The previous lives of ancestors and objects animate the works of Roxana Alger Geffen, Antonio McAfee, and Sebastian Martorana, which emphasize rescue and reinvention in context and function. Like Hassan, Geffen incorporates handcraft and textiles in her practice, but to very

different ends. For Geffen, the coded narratives embedded in clothing and everyday items guide her fearless examination of the past and of gender, identity, Whiteness, and class. She enjoys coaxing beauty and balance out of jarring juxtapositions with objects from various eras to trigger jolts in awareness, while appreciating her work for its formal qualities. The Cloak of Unfair Advantage transforms the white cotton bedspread of her great-grandmother, a well-known abolitionist who nonetheless profited from a racist society, into a regal garment. Adorned with red rope and held down by iron wrenches, the work conjures the heavy load of slavery and the baggage we each carry forward. Synthetic hair, a catalyst for self-image, appears in her newer sculptures to expand the play of artifice and nature. In Viral Decor, a wooden blanket stand supports the unlikely match between a fringe of red dolls’ hair and polyester and cotton pompoms, which oddly resemble the coronavirus, reflecting her sympathy for, but resistance to, her family’s past and its artifacts. Here, and elsewhere, an uncanny déjà vu occurs where a piece acts as a touchstone for the past. McAfee starts with a more archival approach to identity construction and the Black experience. The works he selected for TRACES source the most magical portraits of middle-class Georgians from W.E.B. Du Bois and Thomas J. Calloway’s landmark Exhibition of American Negroes, organized for the 1900 Paris Exposition as a counter to prevailing racist taxonomy. Gazing at their otherworldly faces, poses, and props, we wonder who they are; and what they were doing before and after the photograph was taken. Through research, McAfee discovered that these people had extraordinary abilities, including Mamie Westmoreland, a teacher who became an activist for women’s rights during Reconstruction. Along with familiarity, he developed a sense of ownership and protection for them and slipped into their conversation. To multiply possibilities, he digitally reworked elements, like the doubling of hands, the folds of drapery, and the insertion of statuettes into The Photographer’s Son. He incorporates 3D glasses to further complicate perception: the blue and red saturated images shift as we move, their presence echoing beyond the gallery wall. These reimagined portraits speak to the passing of each moment as well as the larger sweep of time. Although the battles they reference are still unresolved, McAfee adds his voice to those of his subjects, forging new opportunities to enhance consciousness and outcome. Martonara uses reclaimed marble and other stone architectural fragments in his work to respond to issues that affect him personally. There are no actual figures present, only the evidence of an activity or event and his marks paired with the vestiges of previous carvings. Over the years, his deepening understanding of the medium’s properties makes his stone selection project-specific. At their core, his works illuminate the unnoticed or under-recognized aspects of labor, and reveal a detailed landscape of modulated contours and textures that nimbly respond to light and gravity. Unseen records the sagging peaks and valleys of a common

dish cloth, part of his collection of flour sacks embroidered by his wife’s grandmother, while Baby Steps, a stand-in for his son at a tender age, draws attention to the green veining and crystal size of three different Vermont and Maryland marbles. More recently, his work has taken on pressing social issues with rising psychic charge. Permanent Separation Anxiety tackles the horrific family situation at the U.S. border, where an abandoned teddy bear is being pulled in opposite directions, revealing the grip of a child and an adult. Martorana’s alternate monuments boldly pit the permanence of stone against the fleeting moments they capture. Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann and Johab Silva use the formal elements of composition as metaphoric building blocks to create stories that enact the friction in their own experiences. Mann’s riotous landscapes of rifts and ties have an immediate physicality, yet they also conjure archeology, maps, and the cosmos. As a biracial, Foreign Service child, the artist grew up crossing borders, exposed to disparate cultures and personal disruptions. This hybrid experience propels her aesthetic of accident and control, while folding together Western painterly abstraction with Asian decorative and painting techniques. Also present in her work is an abiding appreciation of ink and paper’s versatility, instilled by her training with a Taiwanese Sumi master, along with a sly critique of the colonial ideal in Euro-centric landscapes, made more poignant by the planet’s actual state. Evoking the magic and ritual of the Buddhist cave murals in Dunhuang, China, the commanding Salamander Room riffs on the eponymous fairy tale, where a boy imagines turning his bedroom into a home for his pet salamander. As is her wont, she layers an initial pour of pigment with silkscreened and painted fragments that press against each other in some sections and in others get grafted or woven into spills and splashes. Hints of forests and architecture ground the sprawl, while repeated arches and vertical ribbons create transitions. The eye feasts on the abundant details and vertiginous perspectives at dizzying speed. Like a scroll gone wild, the painting casts a seamless spell, becoming a fantastical gateway into the unknown. In Point A to Point B and to Point A Again, Silva charts the progresses and setbacks that occur in the course of a life. For him, identity is not something culturally or nationally specific. Instead, he engages identity from an expanded perspective that addresses socio-economic disparities and climatic abuses around the world. Over the years, he has pursued abstraction as a means to build a global form of communication and generate an invisible energy field. The human-scaled wall installation features four sets of interlocking block letters on doubled Plexiglas sheets. Like a concrete poem, the anthropomorphizing composition maximizes material properties to create a springboard for self-evaluation. Silva chose Plexiglas for its transparency, which allows for visual penetration and depth. This clarity lessens when the Plexiglas is layered, referencing what we miss or cannot see. The material is also fragile, synonymous with vulnerability and risk-taking: 8

if a crack occurs, the artistic process and, by extension, human development must start over. With a nod to the Washington Color School, Silva employs a nuanced palette ranging from blues and greens to reds, oranges, and yellows. He also uses paint with a rubbery viscosity, evoking an experience of the present as a thick substance, rather than a single point that neatly hews past from future. TRACES mines the details of daily existence and gives agency to objects and events, unfolding like a coming-of-age story full of transitions and transformations. As a whole, the exhibition highlights the echo power of memory to collapse distance and telegraphs how specific incidents can expose fissures in our perceptions and belief systems. Mappers of culture, the eight artists explore the physical and psychic contours of our world, sparking introspection and initiating larger conversations. Their soul-sustaining works chronicle their lived experiences and trigger associations in others, while reminding us of our basic need to touch, to mold, and to create. Infused with syncretic vision, they both ground us and take us on imaginative flights, away from our current quagmire to a terra incognita full of potential, where we can open ourselves to more connection, more clarity, and more opportunity to create the way ahead. Nothing vanishes without a traceâ&#x20AC;Ś

Artists Billy Friebele........................................................... 12

Roxana Alger Geffen............................................ 14

Rania Hassan....................................................... 16 Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann.................................... 18

Sebastian Martorana.......................................... 20

Antonio McAfee.................................................... 22

Brandon Morse..................................................... 24

Johab Silva............................................................. 26

BILLY FRIEBELE What is the origin of the echo chamber effect, which creates collective tunnel vision? Researching the lineage of technology that shapes our world view, I discovered a drawing by Samuel Moreland from 1671 depicting vocal sounds amplified by a speaking trumpet. The drawing was accompanied by text addressing fundamental issues around broadcasting our voices, involving weaponized language, reverberation, and surveillance. This discovery inspired me to create a series of drawings of circular patterns or visual sound waves made with black ink on mirrors, mimicking that echo chamber. In the sculpture garden, I installed a companion work, entitled Nero Plays a Fiddle, based on Morelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s speaking trumpet. The solar-powered kinetic sculpture produces two sonic loops. The first loop is triggered by a motion sensor and vibrates 12

an upright bass string inside a ventilation duct, creating an ominous drone. The second loop is a two-note sequence played by a windshield wiper motor wired directly to a solar panel. When the sun shines, two strings are plucked repeatedly. The tempo varies with the intensity of sunlight. Nero Plays a Fiddle is made up of interlocking parts, yet rife with tensions and inconsistencies. It is a reflection on our current condition, where technologies are locked in endless feedback loops, where environmental threats jeopardize a sustainable future, and where ineffectual leadership creates disillusionment. Nero played music while people suffered. President Trump sends tweets. Billy Friebele is a multimedia artist who explores the tension between our mediated digital experience and the materiality of the environment. He has exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, and the Art Museum of the Americas, among other venues nationally and internationally. Friebele earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Loyola University Maryland.

Right: Billy Friebele, Nero Plays a Fiddle, 2020, Kinetic sonic sculpture Left: Billy Friebele, Tuba Stentoro-Phonica â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Speaking Trumpet , 2020, Ink on mirror

ROXANA ALGER GEFFEN My work always revolves around odd juxtapositions. I start with objects, trying to find combinations that seem unexpected but energetic. I add other materials, feeling my way to a complex whole that has that first moment of contrast at its core. The textile techniques I use have long, important traditions of their own, but I like their practicality and their physicality, the tactile experience of pulling and twisting rope, of piercing cloth with a needle. Later in the process, I begin to be aware of the thematic or conceptual elements of the piece, but I always start with an intuitive response to real things. My current body of work examines my family and its complicated, contradictory relationship to privilege, race, and class. My ancestors include a number of famous reformers who both challenged and benefitted from the system of American slavery, 14

and were both visionary and blind about issues of race. My understanding of my own Whiteness was formed, in part, out of my pride in their accomplishments and shame at their failures. I also see their complexities as reflective of the fundamental and ongoing contradiction of our national identity: that we are a country founded in both moral idealism and racist oppression. Roxana Alger Geffen is a multi-disciplinary artist who shows her work nationally and internationally, and teaches at George Mason University. She studied visual art at Columbia College as an undergraduate, and received her MFA in painting from Boston University. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three children. Left: Detail , Roxana Alger Geffen, The Cloak of Unfair Advantage, 2019, Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great-grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bedspread, rope, string, bone beads, iron wrenches, brass hook and ring, bias tape

Top: Detail, Roxana Alger Geffen, Yoke, 2019, Metal screw, thread, velvet, wood, antique crocheted collar Bottom: Installation View (left to right), Roxana Alger Geffen, The Cloak of Unfair Advantage; Yoke; Slumped Coil; Vent; Fringe, Block, and Coil; Satin, Eggshell, Gloss; A Ladylike Pastime, The Scepter of the Domestic Empress; Viral Decor; Long Weight

RANIA HASSAN Liminality highlights the tension of betwixt and between moments, known and unknown. Standing at a threshold, this piece offers a stage of reflection and a space representing now. The installation is a tracing of the staircase in intervals that align with the architecture. I started with models and sketches to understand the repetitive forms in the space. The connection points converge to a central form that takes the shape of a flat disc that is cut on one side and twists in opposite directions. At the ground level landing, the shape flips, creating a reflection. This led me to think about how we see trees above ground, with their unseen roots mirroring our experience of the visible world—as above, so below. The whole form creates an organism with the center representing a nucleus. The pauses between the connection points on the staircase mimic the gaps in our own existence: we are continually flickering in and out. The web connects us to others, an exchange of energies in this shared liminal space. Moving upwards or downwards, the path is always moving us in forward journeys. It’s about things seen and unseen, where an unknown world becomes familiar by looking. Rania Hassan creates site-specific installations that weave sculptural stories about our connections to time, place, and circumstance. The five main themes she works with embody ideas of community, synchronicity, identity, time, and memory. Her work ranges in scale from walls of 3 x 4 inch drawings, to 40 x 40 x 40 foot suspended installations, such as the one created for the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in 2019. Rania’s artwork is included in the permanent collections of the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD), Amazon Web Services (Herndon, VA), and the District of Columbia’s Art Bank Collection (Washington, DC). In 2009, she received a Craft Award of Excellence from the James Renwick Alliance and has been awarded multiple Arts and Humanities Fellowship Program Grant Awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Left: Rania Hassan, Liminality, 2020, Suspended installation: Silk, linen, bamboo, copper, and stainless steel threads

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN Salamander Room is a painting-installation that harkens back to centuries of cave murals found in Dunhuang, China, where paintings do not describe landscapes, but rather are both landscapes and magical tools. A contemporary Western understanding of landscape painting is delineated by a history of utopic, colonialist images. Although, as a biracial Asian American, I place myself in the discourse created by those pictures, I am influenced by an even longer history of landscape painting as an expression of faith, a charm-object, and a fantastic porthole. My work builds on these themes, but inserts them into a fragmented, melting, and sublimating abstract world. 18

The finished work creates a maximalist, even overwhelming realm—one that knits a contemporary, and personal, iconography into centuries of conversation around the concept of landscape painting as a magical tool, a romantic and escapist porthole, and a declaration of power. Like the eponymous children’s book where a boy magically turns his bedroom into a forest to accommodate his pet salamander, this installation creates a discourse on the spaces we live in and our representations of—and relations to—them. Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann creates large-scale paintings and paper installations that examine mythology, identity, and landscape. She is the recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation grant, a Fulbright grant, the AIR Gallery and Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Fellowships, and the Mayor’s Award and Hamiltonian Fellowship in Washington, DC. Some of the venues where Mann has shown her work include the Walters Art Museum, the American University Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Rawls Museum, the Art Museum at SUNY Potsdam, the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, UAE, and the U.S. Embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon.

Right: Detail, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Salamander Room, 2020 Collage, acrylic, and sumi ink on cut paper Left: Installation View, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Salamander Room, 2020 Collage, acrylic, and sumi ink on cut paper

SEBASTIAN MARTORANA I work to make things that matter to me, that I hope also matter to others. I am moving past simply making beautiful things that prove technical virtuosity—things that I am able to do in stone. Rather, my artwork illustrates the ugly, as a response to the troubled reverence of memorials. Permanent Separate Anxiety was not meant to be adorable, soft, or cuddly. When I drop my children off at daycare or school, I experience a minor amount of anxiety. I don’t like to admit it, but I do—and we have excellent childcare. I CANNOT even begin to fathom the crippling horror and fear that must overcome a parent that has had their child taken away from them, with no sense of where they are and 20

when they will be reunited. What has happened to families at the border is an ATROCITY. Simply stated, during the creation of this sculpture I felt (and still feel) exactly one emotion—Rage. Sebastian Martorana is a sculptor and illustrator living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. For over 10 years, Sebastian has focused on the art of carving. Much of the material used for his sculptures was salvaged from Baltimore’s historic, though often discarded, architecture. He received his BFA in illustration from Syracuse University, after which he became a full-time apprentice in a stone shop outside Washington, DC. He earned his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Rinehart School of Sculpture. Martorana works on private commissions and commercial projects from his Baltimore studio at Hilgartner Natural Stone Company. His projects include work for the United States Senate building, the National Basilica in Baltimore, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and, most recently, the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC. He is a faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a repeat presenter for the American Craft Council. Among other exhibitions, his work was featured at the Renwick Gallery’s 40 under 40: Craft Futures, and is now represented in the museum’s permanent collection. Top: Sebastian Martorana, Permanent Separation Anxiety, 2018, Salvaged Beaver Dam marble Left: (clockwise rom top left) Sebastian Martorana, Hand of the Artist, Glove: Anti-Vibration, 2016, Vermont Pavonazzo marble; Hand of the Artist, Glove: Leather, 2016, Indiana Limestone; Hand of the Artist, Glove: Engineer, 2015, Carrara marble; Hand of the Artist, Glove: Thermal, 2015, Carrara marble.

ANTONIO MAFEE Appropriating photographs from W.E.B Du Bois and Thomas Calloway’s Exhibition of American Negroes (1900) and the Ronald Rooks Collection (housed at University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s, Albin O. Kuhn Special Collections) into various 3D images, I attempt to provide alternate ways to see black figures, ways that allow the subjects to have multitudes of possibilities, real and imagined, within a still image. In my series Through the Layers, the reimagined images provide a less static and more inexplicable depiction of the individuals, breaking down their image to reveal red and blue versions that play with the act of viewing and perception. Shifting positions while viewing the images allows the audience to view these sitters in a state that is in flux, opening up an engagement that is physical and pictorial and aims to redefine normality. “The brain did not evolve to see the world the way it is…the brain evolved to see the world in a way that was useful to see in the past…we inherit perception…” states Dr. Beau Lotto. As essential and urgent as it was for the Exhibition of American Negroes to redefine the depiction and understanding of middle-class blacks in Georgia to combat racist depictions and ideas, Through the Layers is continuing that legacy by setting new precedents of what is expected. With various options for 22

interacting with these representations, I add to the cycle of upgrading our perception of others and start a constructive shift in biases and assumptions that would be passed on, crafting new legacies. Antonio McAfee is a photographer based in Baltimore, MD. He received his BFA in Fine Art Photography (2007) from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Shortly after, he earned his MFA in Photography (2009) from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2011, he received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). McAfeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work addresses the complexity of representation by appropriating and manipulating photographic portraits of African Americans in the 19th century, funk and R&B musicians, and transitioned family members.

Top: Antonio McAfee, The Photographerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Son, 2019, Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses Bottom: Antonio McAfee, Mamie Westmorland, 2017, Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses Left: Installation view, Through the Layers series by Antonio McAfee

BRANDON MORSE Ambient Distress in the Thicket is a multi-channel video and sound installation that depicts the passage through a ghostly landscape of decay and collapse. A stand of trees emerges out of the dark. In time, we enter this thicket and move through its dense intertwined network of branches and trees. The further we progress into this landscape, the more it becomes clear that all is not wellâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;voluminous forest canopies cede way to barren husks and fallen limbsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the land becomes littered with the traces and remnants of a past verdancy. Abundance gives way to scarcity until finally we are presented with nothing but the offal of a system once complex and thriving. 24

Brandon Morse is a Washington-based artist who works with generative systems to examine the ways physical phenomena, such as entropy and emergence, can function both poetically and metaphorically. Through the use of code, and the creation of custom computer software, he creates simulations of seemingly complex systems resulting in videos and video installations that seek to draw parallels between these systems and the ways in which we, both individually and collectively, navigate the world around us. He has exhibited his work in museums, art spaces, and galleries across North America, Asia, and Europe.

Above: Video Stills, Brandon Morse, Ambient Distress in the Thicket, 2020, Multi-channel generative video and sound installation Left: Installation View, Brandon Morse, Ambient Distress in the Thicket, 2020, Multi-channel generative video and sound installation

JOHAB SILVA Point A to Point B and to Point A Again is the result of a personal analysis of how I got to my present point in life. I reflect on what it took to get here, what accomplishments and failures happened along the way, and what things I had to revisit in order to keep moving forward. The work offers an invitation to anyone to rethink their life story. Point A to Point B and to Point A Again is a bridge to the past, a door for exploring the present, and an imaginary bridge to the future. Johab Silva has lived and worked in the Washington, DC-area since 2008, and is one of the founding members of Kicker Collective. He earned a BFA and MAT from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Currently, he is an MFA candidate at Maine College of Art. Silvaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ongoing research explores themes of space, time, and environmental Above: issues. His work has been exhibited nationally and Installation View, Johab Silva, internationally, including at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Point A to Point B and to Point A Again, 2019-20, Plastic paint on plexiglass Transformer Gallery, Miami Art Palace, and the Santo Andre Museum of Art. He has had recent exhibitions at Right: Cody Gallery, KunstHaus Gallery, and Touchstone Gallery, Detail, Johab Silva, Point A to Point B and to Point A Again, 2019-20, Plastic paint on and has been featured in reviews in The Washington Post, plexiglass Sculpture, and other media outlets. 26

PLATES

Billy Friebele Nero Plays a Fiddle, 2020 Kinetic sonic sculpture: steel, ventilation duct, solar panels, charge controller, marine battery, cables, oil barrel, wire, aluminum, microcontroller, motors, IR sensor, windshield wiper, silicone hand, mirror, magnets, RC car wheel, hardware, upright bass strings 113 x 120 x 40 in. Courtesy of the artist Billy Friebele Binaural Echo Chamber, 2020 Ink on mirror 11 x 15 in. Courtesy of the artist Billy Friebele Quadrophonic Reverb, 2020 Ink on mirror 16 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist Billy Friebele Six-Point Standing Wave, 2020 Ink on mirror 34 x 48 in. Courtesy of the artist

Billy Friebele Tuba Stentoro-Phonica â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Speaking Trumpet, 2020 Ink on mirror 12 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Roxana Alger Geffen Long Weight, 2019 Horsehair, cast iron, pantyhose, ribbon, plastic tags, wire 70 x 4.5 x 4 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen A Ladylike Pastime, 2019 Fabric, paper, string, metal hardware, thread, plastic tags, iron sash weights 80 x 14 x 11 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen Yoke, 2019 Metal screw, thread, velvet, wood, antique crocheted collar 64.5 x 8 x 5 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen The Scepter of the Domestic Empress, 2019 Iron rod, zip ties, doily, paper tag, Swiffer pad 70 x 21 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen Viral Decor, 2020 Wooden blanket stand, wool, silk, cotton and polyester pompoms, millinery ribbon, polyester doll hair, thread, decorative trim, bias tape 30.5 x 28 x 12 in. Courtesy of the artist Roxana Alger Geffen Vent, 2019 Wooden vent cover, cast iron, bubble wrap, fabric, paper, string, plastic tags, cardboard 28 x 13 x 3 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen Fringe, Block & Coil, 2019 Silk fringe, salvaged moulding, nylon paracord, thread, wire 16 x 13 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen Slumped Coil, 2020 Used climbing rope, cast iron bracket, cut velvet fabric, thread, leather thong, telephone wire, artificial hair approx. 22 x 20 x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen Satin, Eggshell, Gloss, 2020 Silk organza, poly satin, glazed cotton backing, fake hair, rooster feathers, string, thread 80 x 50 x 1.5 in. Courtesy of the artist

Roxana Alger Geffen The Cloak of Unfair Advantage, 2019 Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great-grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bedspread, rope, string, bone beads, iron wrenches, brass hook and ring, bias tape 64 x 52 x 39 in. Courtesy of the artist

Rania Hassan Liminality, 2020 Suspended installation: Silk, linen, bamboo, copper, and stainless steel threads approx. 312 x 156 x 76 in. Courtesy of the artist

Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann Salamander Room, 2020 Collage, acrylic, and sumi ink on cut paper 9.5 x 35 x 8 ft. Courtesy of the artist

Sebastian Martorana Hand of the Artist, Glove: Leather, 2016 Indiana Limestone 4 x 8 x 11 in. Courtesy of the artist

Sebastian Martorana Hand of the Artist, Glove: Anti-Vibration, 2016 Vermont Pavonazzo marble 5 x 9 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Sebastian Martorana Hand of the Artist, Glove: Engineer, 2015 Carrara marble 5 x 7.5 x 11 in. Courtesy of Carl B. Bedell Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Sebastian Martorana Hand of the Artist, Glove: Thermal, 2015 Carrara marble 5 x 7.5 x 11 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Sebastian Martorana Permanent Separation Anxiety, 2018 Salvaged Beaver Dam marble 12 x 16 x 7 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Sebastian Martorana Baby Steps, 2014 Salvaged Beaver Dam, Imperial Danby and Montclair Danby marbles 8 x 16 x 12 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Sebastian Martorana Unseen, 2017 Montclair Danby marble 30 x 16 x 4 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Sebastian Martorana Little Lamb, 2012 Salvaged Beaver Dam marble 9 x 8 x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Geoff T. Graham

Antonio McAfee Young Woman, Half-length, 2017 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses 52.6 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph courtesy of the artist

Antonio McAfee The Gem, 2019 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses 49.5 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph courtesy of the artist

Antonio McAfee Robert Smalls, 2019 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses 58.7 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph courtesy of the artist

Antonio McAfee Sonja #2, 2017 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses 54 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph courtesy of the artist

Antonio McAfee The Photographerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Son, 2019 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses 50.3 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph courtesy of the artist

Antonio McAfee Mamie Westmorland, 2017 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses 56.4 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist Photograph courtesy of the artist

Antonio McAfee The Magician, 2019 Archival photographic print, 3D image with 3D glasses, 47.7 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist

Brandon Morse Ambient Distress in the Thicket, 2020 Multi-channel generative video and sound installation Courtesy of the artist

Johab Silva Point A to Point B and to Point A Again, 2019-20 Plastic paint on plexiglass Suite of four sculptures, each 72 x 36 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist

This catalogue was produceed in conjunction with an exhibition guest curated by Sarah Tanguy and organized by The Kreeger Museum. TRACES The Kreeger Museum Washington, DC September 23, 2020 - January 16, 2020

Published in the United States by The Kreeger Musem 2401 Foxhall Road NW Washington, DC 20007 www.kreegermuseum.org Helen Chason, Director Sarah Hines, Designer Danielle O’Steen, Editor All photography by Greg Staley except where otherwise stated.

Image Credits All images are courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted. Cover: Detail, Billy Friebele, Six-Point Standing Wave, 2020, Ink on mirror, 34 x 48 in. Photo by Greg Staley Page 2: Installation view, Rania Hassan. Liminality, 2020, Suspended installation: Silk, linen, bamboo, copper, and stainless steel threads, approx. 312 x 156 x 76 in. Photo by Greg Staley Page 4: Installation view: (background) Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Salamander Room, 2020, Collage, acrylic, and sumi ink on cut paper, 9.5 x 35 x 8 ft.; (foreground) Roxana Alger Geffen, The Cloak of Unfair Advantage, 2019, Artist’s great-grandmother’s bedspread, rope, string, bone beads, iron wrenches, brass hook and ring, bias tape, 64 x 52 x 39 in. Photo by Greg Staley Page 10: Detail, Satin, Eggshell, Gloss, 2020, Silk organza, poly satin, glazed cotton backing, fake hair, rooster feathers, string, thread, 80 x 50 x 1.5 in. Photo by Greg Staley Pages 18-19: Photos by Geoff T. Graham Page 23: Photos courtesy of the artist Page 24-25: Images courtesy of the artist Page 28: Detail, Sebastian Martorana, Unseen, 2017, Montclair Danby marble, 30 x 16 x 4 in. Photo by Geoff T. Graham