Notes on the Sky
August 28, 2021
Sean Desiree
Shanekia McIntosh
Elbert Perez
Notes on the Sky
Sean Desiree. Marble Hill, 2021. Various hardwoods and brass on ply.
Sean Desiree. Marble Hill, 2021. Various hardwoods and brass on ply.
Sean Desiree. Marble Hill, 2021. Various hardwoods and brass on ply.
Elbert Perez. Delicate Constitution, 2021. Oil on canvas.
Elbert Perez. Delicate Constitution, 2021. Oil on canvas.
Elbert Perez. Delicate Constitution, 2021. Oil on canvas.
Shanekia McIntosh. Notes on the Sky, 2021. Digital video and audio file.
Shanekia McIntosh. Notes on the Sky, 2021. Digital video and audio file.
Shanekia McIntosh. Notes on the Sky, 2021. Digital video and audio file.
Shanekia McIntosh. Notes on the Sky, 2021. Digital video and audio file.
Shanekia McIntosh. Still, Notes on the Sky, 2021.
Elbert Perez. Paz, 2020 and Morir Sonando, 2021.
Elbert Perez. Paz, 2020. Oil on canvas.
Elbert Perez. Paz, 2020. Oil on canvas.
Elbert Perez. Morir Sonando, 2021. Oil on canvas.
Elbert Perez. Morir Sonando, 2021. Oil on canvas.
Elbert Perez. Damocles' Pets, 2021. Impromptu installation; hardware, hammer, nylon thread, woodblock, porcelain animals.
Elbert Perez. Damocles' Pets, 2021. Impromptu installation; hardware, hammer, nylon thread, woodblock, porcelain animals.
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The three artists in Notes on the Sky were all born in New York City and currently reside in upstate New York.
The works on view convey the process of gathering notes, making observations, recording. The show is titled after Shanekia McIntosh's work, a video in the form of a poem, or a poem in the form of a video, it has the quality of notes on a page; ideas, images, sounds, and landscapes linguistically fading in and out of view.
Utilizing joinery and woodcraft, Sean Desiree's work expands notions of functionality and improvisation. Sean expands traditional woodcraft, centering improvisation to create hybridized, functional art objects: furniture, maps, and most recently, a musical instrument:
In Notes on the Sky, they are showing Marble Hill, an aerial map of Marble Hill public housing projects, where the artist grew up, composed of inlaid hardwood on ply. The piece is intersected by long pieces of brass and hardwood, representing Broadway.
Shanekia McIntosh is showing Notes on the Sky, a recently completed video and audio file. The video opens and closes with footage recorded during the George Floyd protests of 2020, a clear blue sky punctuated by three helicopters, flying over New York City. Shanekia's voice sings the words to Feeling Good, famously recorded by Nina Simone in 1965 for her album, I Put a Spell on You. Her rendition of these words maintains the original melody, but departs in delivery; the sound has been edited, each word and accompanying note slightly spaced apart, choppy. The video then unfolds into a series of landscapes, each one under a different sky -a fiery sunset, a tranquil, crisp blue afternoon seen upside down, as though the viewer is laying in the grass, a dense gray fog. Shanekia's camera records birds, the distant contrail of an airplane, a guardrail speeding by either side of a car as it barrels down a highway, all overlaid by spoken poetry, subtitled, interspersed with sonic experimentation. A camera shot taken from inside a car passes one of Shanekia's works; the Madison Theatre marquee in Albany, emblazened with her poetry. The marquee, under a neon MADISON sign and surrounded by flashing edison bulbs, reads:
THE MADISON MOVIE THEATRE_
MOVIE PASS
$9.99
UNLIMITED MOVIES
HEAR YOURSELF WHISPER
UTOPIA IS YOURS IF WE WANT IT
SHANEKIA MCINTOSH
In much of her recent work, Shanekia's use of semiotic detournement derives vividly optimistic emotional landscapes from unexpected places, for example in, Spiral as Ritual, where the Furniture Plus LED sign on Fairview Avenue in Greenport, NY (a homogenized, busy highway,) was programmed to display her poetry instead of the usual advertising.
Elbert (Joe) Perez's paintings stem from sublimated, oftentimes painful, emotions. Dread, angst; these feelings are the starting point for many of Joe's paintings. And yet, the paintings bring the artist joy... What began as a still life of a vase of flowers and a porcelain cow creamer, (Paz) painted in early 2020, became a series of paintings exploring a personal iconography orbiting around the figure of Damocles, an ancient anecdotal character who, for one day, trades places with a king. Sitting on the king Dionysius's throne, Damocles is surrounded by luxuries, but finds himself underneath a sword which hangs from a single horse hair. In this series of paintings, cute, vulnerable animals (fawns, porcelain puppies and cats) and are painted with hammers floating above them. In his newest work (Morir Sonando,) a flying bronze horse enters through a doorway, a hammer floating over it. In another painting on view in Notes on the Sky*, dewdrops collect and sparkle on a spider web and on the wings of what looks like a moth or a butterfly.