Juxtapoz Journal – Alicia McCarthy, Muzae Sesay, and Martha Shaw Share the House @ pt.2 Gallery

pt.2 Gallery presents a gaggle present of recent works by Alicia McCarthy, Muzae Sesay, and Martha Shaw. An exhibition of work which can also be a examine on portray, the items of McCarthey, Sesay, and Shaw ahead an curiosity in paint as materials and its capability to determine sensation. Right here, matter and construction apply to a sequence of formalist considerations–luster, wash, gesture, hue, and texture—and the topic of depiction—abstraction, panorama, object, interiority, and hint. Collectively McCarthy, Sesay, and Shaw make a triangular formation permitting the exhibition to seek out its approach between and inside every artist’s explicit considerations whereas presenting moments of convergence whereby the viewers is left to wayfind. 

On this exhibition, the artists are introduced in a sequence of groupings, McCarthy and Sesay, Shaw and McCarthy, and a solo presentation by Sesay. McCarthy’s works use enamel paint, coloured pencils, and hyper pigments to depict bowed bands of colours that weave into one another. Mccarthy’s funding within the gesture and motion of paint and the supplies themselves—upcycling and using on a regular basis mediums—is precept inside these works. McCarthy’s observe is a kind of navigational instrument, figuring circulate—of paint, hand, and thoughts—to route herself. Shaw’s oil on canvas works seize murky waters and radiating settings; entire and severed fish, flowers, and gems. Shaw paints on an intimate scale, drawing you into the glimmer and shine of every second the item of examine refracts. Sesay’s works prolong his vernacular on geometry and type with shade blocks, elongated and wavering strokes, and spherical shapes, creating works on canvas that seamlessly shift dimensions. Peaks of exteriors, aerial views of buildings, and polygon planes are awash in deep titian akin to the solar rising that finds its approach into every work. 

With Sesay’s solo presentation, the works harken to explicit places in Oakland—eating places, bars, and gathering areas. Right here, the state of reverie and the inevitable passing of time takes on the cartographical whereby Sesay remembers and supposes place. The precision of fabric attributes of every institution turns into secondary as it’s Sesay’s sense of place which construction these works. Hung as a sequence of home windows, every portray is framed by a brown rectangle painted immediately onto the gallery wall extending to the ground; each bit provides a peek into an inside scene that’s/was/will not be. Sesay’s brighter tones have been washed in darkish overlay, casting the work within the night hours and leaving a glimpse of reminiscence into a dismal sphere. Right here Sesay’s meditations on the ever-changing panorama and his historical past inside the metropolis grow to be portal-esque of their collapse of self, web site, and continuance. 

Central to the exhibition is an funding within the formation and substance of neighborhood. The Bay Space ethos, that radical refusal and name in the direction of the collective that has guided the art-making that has and continues to occur right here, is current in every artist’s particular person practices and as a gaggle. McCarthy acts as a unifying agent extending her relationships as a casual mentee and mentor with Shaw and Sesay, respectively. Many years-long friendship and collaboration between Shaw and McCarthey and years-long fellowship and neighborhood constructing with Sesay, McCarthy’s funding, and continued observe in care grounds the exhibition. There’s a matter-of-factness to the design and execution of the works on view, an unsentimental and deeply tender assertation that making is prime and that materials and friendship can information our sense of artwork, care, and dedication to one another. On this sense, the ask right here is considered one of presence to permit for the motion in paint and the spirit between artists to scrub over. —Essence Harden