Unsympathetic Magic
curated by Casey Gleghorn
Reception: October 30th, 2020, 3 – 9 pm
No Gallery – 105 Henry Street #4 NYC NY 10002
Sara Kathryn Arledge
Cameron
Vincent Dermody
André Eugène
L
Genesis P-Orridge
The anthropological concept of sympathetic magic hinges on the notion that like produces like, that our actions will elicit a specific reaction – the pin in the doll will stop the man’s heart. Unsympathetic Magic is something else entirely.
The antithesis of specificity, Unsympathetic Magic is a way of living. Rejecting magic as something to be understood, it points to a magical practice that, while indefinable, is rooted firmly in reality. Unsympathetic Magic is slippery, evolving and adapting to a nuanced and ever-changing world. These artists are not playing with casting spells, there is no light as a feather/stiff as a board. They are visionaries, shapeshifters, channellers, transcenders, multiversal worldbuilders, agents of their own destinies.
Cameron’s Staghead casts an eye back to the emergence of American occultism, a new understanding of symbols and the development of a new holistic magical thinking for the modern world. Her hand conjures hallucinations, the window to our anthropomorphic tendencies open up, if only for a second. From Cameron’s backward glance, Vincent Dermody drags us firmly back into the contemporary landscape. The artist’s sculptures evoke a swelling, organic mass lurching through the postmodern landscape, fragments finding homes in the physicality of a life. Genesis P-Orridge, founding member of Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth exemplifies a firm understanding of the relationship semiotics has to magical thinking, evoking a churning reality ripe for intervention. Berman’s psychedelic brushstrokes swirl in motion with Sara Kathryn Arledge’s dancing figures, while L’s spells synergistically combine everyday objects into incantations that shift events, consciousness, and states of being. André Eugène’s sculpture reveals the cyclical nature of it all, the duality of lived experience under constant awareness of our shared journey to a place of rest.
Unsympathetic Magic brings together a diverse group of artists, each a life lived in the scope of magical thought and its application to the contemporary world. They reject plaid representations of magic in practice, living as an embodiment of magical thinking as a worldview.
Sara Kathryn Arledge (1911-1998) – BA University of California, Los Angeles, Columbia University, The Barnes Foundation. Highlights: The Armory Center for The ARTS, US (2019) The Speed Museum, US (2019)
Cameron (b. 1922-1995) – Autodidact, Student of Thelema under Aleister Crowley. Highlights: Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, NY (2015), MOCA Pacific Design Center, CA (2014-15) Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, CA (2014), The Pasadena Museum of California Art, CA (2012), The Getty Museum, CA (2011), Centre Pompidou, FR (2008), Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (1996)
Vincent Dermody (b.1973) – BFA The School of the Art Institute, Chicago IL, MFA University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago IL. Highlights: Dermody’s work has been the subject of a major feature in Artforum as well as group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.
André Eugène (b. 1959 Haiti) – Autodidact, Highlights: 22nd Sydney Biennale, AU (2020), Le Centre d’Art d’Haïti, HT (2018 & 2017), Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2013), Fowler Museum, CA (2012), Haiti Pavilion 54th Venice Biennale (2011), International Museum of Slavery, UK (2006), Founder of the Ghetto Biennale, HT
L – Mountain School of Arts, BFA, Brigham Young University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. L has held solo exhibitions at Shoot the Lobster, Los Angeles; Martos Gallery, New York; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; Marlborough, New York; Stems Gallery, Brussels; AND NOW, Dallas; JOAN, Los Angeles. Collective exhibitions include Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Five Car Garage, Los Angeles; CAPITAL, San Francisco; Lefebvre + Fils, Paris; Sariev Gallery, Bulgaria. Selected group exhibitions include Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills; Team Gallery, New York; Kerry Schuss, New York; Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles + Bucharest; Venus over Los Angeles; Ellis King, Dublin; The Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince. L’s work has been reviewed and written about in Frieze Magazine, Artforum, New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Spike Quarterly among many others.
Genesis P-Orridge (b.1950-2020) – BA University of Hull Highlights: Tom of Finland Foundation, CA (2019,) Rubin Museum of Art, NY (2016), Institute of Contemporary Art, UK (2014 & 1976), The Warhol Museum, NY (2013), Moma,.NY (2012 & 2000), Archive acquired by TATE in 2009, founding member of Throbbing Gristle and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.