Relative to the Sun at HAIR+NAILS
Closing August 16
The expression, relative to the sun, refers to the use of the sun as a reference point, like speed from the position of the sun. This also means that from the sun, one looks back at earth, where we are, and that there is a lag in time before the sun’s light reaches us. Works in this exhibition seem to exist within that pocket of time, in between. In the back room, Mahsa R. Fard’s jewel-like oil paintings of dreamy interiors of pools, void of people, combine imagery she has seen and imagined: oases. I think of the interior spaces of riads in Morocco; these traditional houses or palaces seem inconspicuous from the outside, but reveal courtyards, fountains, pathways, lush interiors, and ornate architecture on the inside. They are installed with Rose McBurney and Allan Gardner’s evocative, blurred oil paintings. In the front room, things get weirder.
I first came across HAIR+NAILS at Felix in Los Angeles, their quirky booth at the Roosevelt Hotel drew my attention, as did the gallerists: Kristin Van Loon and Ryan Fontaine. Who were these, cooler than the minimal gallerist stereotype, Van Loon with her electric blue hair and Fontaine with his colorful fit? Artists, of course, who first met at Minneapolis’ Walker Art—Van Loon, a dancer, and Fontaine, a musician and artist. Their program is ambitious, mixing artists from the Midwest with elsewhere presenting abstract and figurative colorful paintings, video, sculpture, and the occasional artist engaging in retrofuturist aesthetics, with many recognizable names. Their exhibition design with untreated wood walls nods to their background in DIY organizing, in a good way. Expanding from their Minneapolis HQ, they have been running a space on Henry Street in New York.
The dialogue between Don Christian Jones’ Don and Eiko Hose Dance I (2025) painting of a dancer and a hose and Aru Apaza Kunsa Apthaptawa (what do you bring?) (A score for violin and two rocks who know each other) (2025) mixed media abstract set-design both recall the open-ended possibilities of performing, while staging togetherness. Harry Gould Harvey IV, who is represented by P·P·O·W, two highly detailed drawings depict dreamscapes. Telematic Vision has elements flowing out of a TV-set. While Brittni Ann Harvey’s wall installation combines elements into something poetic, shrine-like. Both boast intense imaginaries around Americana. Continuing with narratives, I can imagine Eric Timothy Carlson’s drawing of a comb titled Comb (after Claudette’s lost in fire) (2016) as a page in a children’s book, with a storyline of a woman dying in a fire, or surviving, but losing her comb. There is also a witch, an unmade bed, and a drawing of an A and an X called Omega (x), which surely has some deeper meaning that I cannot place. Either way, this imaginative show brings fantasy, memory, and fable into focus.