CONNECTIONS
Artists:
Hayley Barker, Hawkins Bolden, Casey Cook, Marina Kappos, Nate Plotkin and Yves Tessier
In the current climate, connections are more important than ever. We are all in quarantine seeking to distance ourselves from the outside world, home with family or friends, or completely on our own, for the safety of others and ourselves. How we interact and connect with the world during this strange moment will alter everything that follows. We will wear ourselves differently once things feels safe again, and we will hopefully have an expanded consciousness and sense of empathy for everyone and everything around us.
Connections, the gallery’s first online-only exhibition, explores issues ranging from intimacy, isolation, our relationship to nature, the power of touch and how we communicate. Hayley Barker’s dreamy oil paintings evoke the blissful solace that can be found while alone and also the remarkable beauty of something as simple as a front yard path. Hawkins Bolden (1914–2005), who went blind as a young boy, created haunting scarecrows with discarded objects found around his neighborhood in Memphis, TN and relied only on his sense of touch to create their unusual forms. Casey Cook shows us that vulnerability and power are not always exclusive. Her paintings twist mundane moments into hypnotic, surreal scenes and depict sensual encounters with the natural world in very unexpected ways. In Marina Kappos series of paintings called “Vibrating Women”, her painted protagonists are physically coming apart and vibrating out into the universe and psychological space of others, a psychic touch. Nate Plotkin creates painted worlds that reference our everyday existence, yet somehow still feel highly charged and otherworldly, all while depicting relatable and intimate moments of personal retrospection. For decades, Yves Tessier has explored the dynamics of interactions between people of all colors and backgrounds, always with a wry sense of humor and an acute eye for the small details that make life so entertaining.
As businesses (and individuals) around the globe seek to adjust and reinvent overnight, SHRINE is launching a new e-commerce shop (shop-shrine.nyc) to host a series of online exhibitions and offer merchandise including skateboards, tote bags and artists-designed clothing. Sales generated from these virtual exhibitions will help keep artists in quarantine afloat during this difficult time and also benefit a gallery, that like so many others, is unable to open its doors for the foreseeable future.