Blood, Hands, and Mannequins: A Group Show at GHOSTMACHINE Explores Unbound Bodies
Installation view of Peripheral Belonging at GHOSTMACHINE. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
Located on Monroe Street along the outskirts of Chinatown in Manhattan, GHOSTMACHINE’s current exhibition Peripheral Belonging curated by Magdalena Dukiewicz celebrates the potential found in the expansive, transgressive space of the outer limits. Featuring works by Dukiewicz, Terrance James Jr., Char Jeré, Jiwon Rhie, and Guillermo Rodriguez, the show embraces the periphery as a fluid, active interstice where fixed notions of boundaries, systems of violence, and structures of power are disrupted. Through acts of deconstruction, the works in the show dissect the physical body, popularly signified as the literal and metaphorical container of the self, as a strategy to challenge hegemonic, categorical concepts of selfhood and collective ways of being. Incorporating an uncanny cacophony of sound and movement, the exhibition challenges sensorial hierarchies that privilege the ocular experience—a fixation that influences and determines much of our approach to the self.
Installation view of the exhibition. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
Magdalena Dukiewicz. Detail of Oscillations, 2024. Artist’s blood and hair, hydrolyzed collagen, sodium citrate, dye, copper and stainless steel rods, cannulas (breathing tubes), PCV tube, and air pump. 84 x 48 x 48 in. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
In the street-facing window of the gallery, Oscillations (2024) by Dukiewicz, a thin yet voluptuous, bright red sculpture dangling on display, triggers the voyeuristic impulse within the everyday streetgoers of downtown Manhattan. Closer inspection of the ethereal, undulating work reveals dark browns mingling with the vibrant hues of crimson. A copper rod armature, threaded with plastic breathing tubes used by the artist’s mother during her illness, forms the overall shape of the work. Balls made of the artist’s hair cap the ends of the structure’s baroque branches. The breathing tubes extend from the ceiling to the floor and lead into a tub sitting against the wall, hidden from street view, filled with a brown-red liquid mixture partly made with the artist’s blood. A pump introduces air into this assemblage of conduits, enabling the blood-like liquid to circulate through the work, alluding to both the circulatory and respiratory systems. Incorporating her own hair and blood, Dukiewicz investigates the sexualized femme body, shunned as abject or obsessively controlled by society, and subverts this control, reclaiming autonomy over the body while emphasizing its endurance and matriarchal resilience.
Char Jeré, Genuflect Symphony, 2024. Comet, black clay, 5 Marsona sleep aides, light bulb, circuits, wood, cotton, and 3 satellite dishes. 84 x 60 x 48 in. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
Detail of Genuflect Symphony. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
Overlapping the soft bubbling sound of Oscillations, a monotonous, vibrating buzz emits from Jeré’s Genuflect Symphony (2024) in the back corner of the room. Perched on top of dozens of uniform green Comet bleach canisters, five Marsona sleep aid speakers crank out a droning composition of white noise. Numerous Black ears made with black clay surround the machines, carefully positioned above with some debris scattered on the floor. A gigantic white Q-tip and a trio of TV satellite dishes rest against the wall. Representing the incessant and systemic nature of racism, the never-ending tone of white noise produced by the sleep aids—by design—drowns out varied sounds. The Black ears symbolize deep listening as a strategy to cut through the suppressive white noise and dial into the underlying signal of Black noise, an enduring wavelength broadcasting the lived experiences and distinct narratives of Black identity across time and space. Inspired by Franz Fanon’s 1952 book, Black Skin, White Masks, Jeré posits the resilient power of Black noise as a tool against erasure, particularly that of assimilation, as symbolized by the bleach canisters.
(From left) Jiwon Rhie, Mirror Blind (Conscious Consciousness) (2018). See-through plexiglass, blind components, servo motor, sensors, and Arduino. 74 x 28 x 15 in. Both works on the right by Terrance James Jr., 004_05A_053 (2016) and 007_01B_001 (2017). Archival Inkjet Print. 11 x 17 in, framed 16 x 20 in. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
Rhie’s kinetic sculpture Mirror Blind (Conscious Consciousness) (2018) is composed of long, stacked panels of transparent mirrored plexiglass hanging down from a traditional window-size frame welded by the artist. Powered by a sensor-reactive motor, the work mimics the up-and-down tilt movements of everyday blinds, making a familiar click-clack sound upon detection of movement. When static, viewers catch a glimpse through the blinds at the gallery’s small window that faces a brick wall (classic NYC trope). When triggered by movement in the gallery, the plexiglass panels tilt up to cover the gaps in between. Now, the mirror coating reflects the image of the viewer, reversing the gaze, while the transparent plexiglass simultaneously continues to reveal the view behind the blinds. This parallel experience of viewing collapses psycho-social concepts of self and other, emphasizing the interdependent, relational nature of the self.
Terrance James Jr., Untitled (026_01C_016), 2020 (2018). Archival Inkjet Print. 11 x 17 in., framed 16 x 20 in. Image courtesy of the artist.
Terrance James Jr.’s black and white archival inkjet prints 004_05A_053, 007_01B_001, and Untitled (026_01C_016) of sculptures incorporating PVC mannequins and styrofoam heads reference the portrait head and torso common in classical sculpture and traditional portraiture; however, piles of polymerized PVA glue covering these forms and the polyurethane tubing threaded through them obfuscate the identity of the sitter. The sparse, monochromatic palettes further merge the materials with the forms. These artificial, industrial materials glisten under the bright flash of light, emphasizing the technological, dystopian nature of the works. Collectively, they present a narrative depicting the subjects as overtaken by humanity’s refuse and excess.
Guillermo Rodriguez, Double Figure, 2024. Pewter, stainless steel tube, and steel wire rope. 13 x 72 x 5 in. Image courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio.
Rodriguez’s Double Figure (2024), a sculpture of two pewter hands pointing down from a stainless steel crossbar hung at shoulder level, gestures toward another piece by the same artist, titled Demi-Pointe (Imaginary Partner). A pewter foot—connected to a curved line of stainless steel balls stacked on top of one another like a spine, helix, or an actual ball and chain—sits poised in an arch. The dismembered metal extremities, at once familiar and anonymous, elicit viewers to respond to the absence of and their disconnection from the body. They also evoke associations with intimacy, sexuality, and fetish, touching on how dynamics of power and violence shape these impulses, as visitors fill the void between the hands and feet with unique reckonings of desire and longing.
Peripheral Belonging repositions the periphery not as a cast-off margin at the outer field of vision, but as the ever-contracting forefront of knowing and not knowing, imagining and reimagining, the construction and reconstruction of the self.
The exhibition is on view through September 28, 2024 with extended hours until 8pm for the closing reception on its final day.