GROUP EXHIBITION
May 2 – June 14, 2025

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This group exhibition takes a look at the act of bathing as it connects to folklore, ritual, leisure, and care.

The works include the floating bodies and objects from Kahn & Selesnick's Tarot of the Drowning World and shimmering water sirens of Nykelle DeVivo's Flash of the Spirit, as well as several images from Antone Dolezal & Lara Shipley's bathhouse mysticism from their collaborative series, The Naked Truth. Paris-based Ludovica De Santis' bathers are constructions derived from her lucid dreaming series, Onironautica. Additionally, the exhibition features a selection of vintage prints from the archive of early abstraction photographer, Gita Lenz.

Including fresh works and featured inventory by:

Ludovica De Santis
Nykelle Devivo
Antone Dolezal & Lara Shipley
Kahn & Selesnick
Gita Lenz

LUDOVICA DE SANTIS

“Onironautica” is the title of Ludovica De Santis’ latest photography exploration. The term derives from the Greek words ‘Oνειρος’ (dream) and ‘ναύτης’ (sailor).

Inspired by the work of Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden, De Santis has embarked on a
journey to delve into her unconscious state. She has started a daily journaling practice, begun utilizing WBTB and MILD techniques, and experimented with infusions of herbs and vitamins to stimulate the dream-making process in an attempt to examine lucid dreaming.

“My art is deeply engaged with the exploration of the human psyche, delving into the unconscious and
unintentional elements shaping the ego, identity, and personality, and in conformity with this project, I
have allowed full expression to my unconscious mind.

As André Breton wrote in the first Surrealist Manifesto, attempting to articulate an artistic approach that delves into the unconscious: ‘[Surrealism] resolves the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.’ There is always a ‘contradiction’ in dreams which occurs as an illogical response to reality. What I have been trying to do with Onironautica is to ‘capture’ or ‘reproduce’ that contradiction that turns reality into a super-reality.”

Ludovica De Santis, born in Rome in 1991, graduated in art history and cinema from the Sorbonne. Her internationally acclaimed work includes her latest project Onironautica, winner of the LensCulture 2024 Art Awards and a finalist for the Gomma Grant 2023. This series has been featured in JRNL (edited by Lola Paprocka), Ima Magazine, and Fisheye Magazine #67. It has been exhibited at Autograph Gallery in the exhibition Become Visible, at the Athens Photo Festival, and at PhMuseum Days. Published in Zone Magazine, Yogurt Magazine, PhMuseum, and Phroom, the series is still ongoing.

NYKELLE DEVIVO

Devivo’s featured works are from two projects, “Tha Crossroads” (2013 - 2024) and “Flash of the Spirit” (2019 - 2023), which fold the artist’s practice into one which explores spiritualism and the identity of self. DeVivo uses the flash as a tool to pierce the veil between the physical and spiritual realms, looking to the past, present, and future of the African diaspora.

“Named after Robert Farris Thompson’s landmark book of the same title, Flash Of The Spirit refers to the lineage of the spiritual light work that spans the African diaspora. First documented in traditional dances along the West Coast of the continent, Thompson noted that Africans used brightly painted masks that, when twirled by the wearer, created an effect of strobing light that was meant to act as a portal between our physical world and the land of our ancestors. I create these self-portraits as an extension of my own spiritual practice in that my movements under the shroud act as a form of praise dancing, and the land these are created upon are locations I regularly return to for prayer. I choose sequined material as a transmitter for the divine as historically it’s been used for Black expression from Soul Train to Sun Ra as well as the inherent connotations to Queer culture…”

Of “Tha Crossroads,” DeVivo writes, “...possessed by Afrofuturist methodologies, I recognized my relationship to a lineage of spiritual workers throughout the diaspora who command reflected light as a technology for divination. I understood my image-making as a ritual, transcending the so-called “real” captured by the camera’s lens as I began photographing myself cloaked in reflective materials illuminated by large strobes, seeking to connect with deeper truths. Through the luminescence of these images, I could, paradoxically, move beyond fixed states of time and reach toward ancestral or transcendent ways of being. The late American art historian and writer Robert Farris Thompson referred to this as the flash of the spirit.”

DOLEZAL & SHIPLEY

The Naked Truth takes place at a hotel in the rural Ozark region of the United States. In the Depression era 1930s, a former magician and AM radio personality turned the hotel into an illusion of a hospital, where patients came to seek his fraudulent cancer treatment. The artists utilize the actual hospital location and archival materials destabilized by overt digital manipulation and fictive performance, creating an environment where truth and lie are as intermingled as the “hospital” itself.

This project explores the manipulative practice of a conman, whose exploits mirror those common in the world today in the increasingly blurred areas of medicine, politics, and cult of celebrity. In considering the trauma of the past, we hope to better understand this moment, where humanity struggles with an increasingly divided sense of reality and where certain individuals harness disinformation for personal benefit.

Antone Dolezal is a visual artist whose body of work employs photography, video, sound, archival materials, and bookmaking to survey the cultural and political dynamics of American history, folklore, and mythology. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe and his prints and artist books are held in notable public collections. Antone graduated with a BFA from the Santa Fe University of Art & Design, MLIS in Archival Studies from Louisiana State University, and MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University. He is currently a Lecturer of Photography at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Lara Shipley is an American photographer. She exhibits in galleries across the United States, and her work has appeared in notable exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her work is in several collection institutions. She received a MFA in photography from Arizona State University and a Bachelors of Photojournalism from the University of Missouri. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Michigan State University

KAHN & SELESNICK

The featured works by artist duo Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick are a selection from the series “Tarot of the Drowning World,” a full tarot card deck in the style of the Marseille Tarot, shot from the artists’ own gardens.

The tarot deck coincides with “Dr. Falke’s Oraculum” and “Madame Lulu’s Book of Fate,” which continue the adventures of the Truppe Fledermaus, a cabaret troupe of anxious mummers and would-be mystics who catalogue their absurdist attempts to augur a future that seems increasingly in peril due to environmental pressures and global turmoil. In this body of work, the artists also examine the notion of the carnivalesque – traditionally the carnival was a time when the normal order of society was upended and reversed, so that at least for a day the fool might become king, the sinner a priest, men and women might cross dress, and sacred ceremonies and normal mores are burlesqued and spoofed. During such brief times of anarchy, societal pressures were relieved by revealing their somewhat absurd and arbitrary natures. Costumes and masks were traditionally worn so that all people might have the same social status during the duration of the festival. The Truppe ask you to consider: is it the carnival that is upside-down, or perhaps the real world that it purports to burlesque?

ABOUT THE ARTISTS: Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick are a collaborative artist team who have been working together since they met while attending art school at Washington University in St. Louis in the early 1980s. Both were born in 1964, in New York City and London respectively. They work primarily in the fields of photography and installation art, specializing in fictitious histories set in the past or future. Kahn lives in the French province of Bretagne, and Selesnick in Upstate New York.

GITA LENZ

Starting in the 1940s as an amateur photographer living in New York, Lenz spent her time documenting the city and capturing intimate urban life. Alongside her social documentary work, Lenz became an early practitioner of abstraction during the rise of Abstract Expressionist movement. Through the 50s and 60s, Lenz achieved success working professionally for commercial and editorial clients.

While her work was featured in numerous photography magazines, Lenz’s received notable recognition during her career. In 1951, Lenz’s work was featured along her peers in Abstraction in Photography, a group exhibition curated by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art. In 1952 Lenz’s work was included in a three-person exhibition, The Third Eye at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In 1955, Edward Steichen included Lenz in another seminal exhibition, The Family of Man at the MoMA.