AFTER CITIES

Organized by FJORD member Theo Mullen
Exhibition Dates: March 14th – April 28th 2019                    
Opening Reception: March 14th 6-9pm         
Gallery Hours: Saturday 2-6pm        

FJORD is pleased to present “After Cities” a two-person exhibition by Letha Wilson and Jeff Williams. This exhibition is the first to pair their work, highlighting shared interests and distinct methods. Through sculpture, photography, installation, and intervention, these artworks are influenced by the material and form of cities. The show also proposes a vision of the future, what might happen after cities are rendered obsolete or after cities are augmented economically, politically, and technologically. 
 
Letha Wilson uses landscape imagery and the material of landscape to blur distinctions between photography and sculpture. Wilson’s artwork questions how a photograph exists in space by urging image and material to coexist. By combining details and establishing shots, monumental and intimate objects, the viewer is both here and there, speaking to our own relationship with subjectivity. The object-picture becomes a presence beyond boundaries, beyond the synthetic or natural world.  For “After Cities,” Wilson has developed a series of interventions within the space. Through cutting, pressing, and laminating photographic images into the architecture of FJORD, Wilson connects the formal constructs of the contemporary gallery with her studio practice. 
 
Jeff Williams is concerned with the properties of materials and their relationship to each other over time. He combines architectural materials, industrial waste, and quotidian objects in order to illuminate their elementary and sensory specificity. For “After Cities,” Williams is exhibiting a series of aluminum sculptures made from foundry slag, thrift store items, and newly manufactured forms. According to Williams, we should have left this material in the ground. To the artist, aluminum is simultaneously a gift, the most magic element on the periodic table in regard to its mutability (from pickling to air travel) and the worst possible discovery, requiring hydroelectric dams for processing and being toxic to all living things. 
 
Letha Wilson was born in 1976 in Honolulu, HI and raised in Greeley, CO. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She earned her BFA from Syracuse University, NY in 1998, and an MFA from Hunter College, NY in 2003. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME, The MacDowell Colony, NH, The Yaddo Foundation, NY, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, and Headlands Center for the Arts, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include GRIMM Gallery, NYC (2018), The Center for Contemporary Art and Culture at PNCA (2017), the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2017), and Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (2016). Wilson has participated in group exhibitions at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; MACRO Museo d’ Arte Contemporanea, Rome; Essl Museum, Austria; Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT.
 
Williams was born in 1976 in Cambridge, MA and raised in Plymouth, MI.  Williams attended Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI before receiving his BFA at Columbus College of Art and Design (1998) and then his MFA from Syracuse University (2002). Williams has been awarded several residencies, most recently from RAIR in Philadelphia, PA; Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA; Recess in New York, NY; Artpace in San Antonio, TX; and the Core Program in Houston, TX. Also, a yearlong fellowship at American Academy in Rome through The Leonore Annenberg Foundation. Solo exhibitions include “Bending Moment” at Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, “New/Used/Wet/Broken” at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA, “11-week interval” at Arthouse (now The Contemporary Austin). Group exhibitions include “Close Quarters” on Governors Island through NADA; “99 Cents or Less” at MOCAD Detroit; “New Cities Future Ruins” at Jubilee Park in Dallas, TX; “House What is Your Crime” at Regina Rex in Queens, NY; and “How the Light Gets In” at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX.