As we begin a tour of SEVEN, a dual-site pop-up exhibition from We Buy Gold taking over (through August 11th) Nicola Vassell and Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, curator Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels is thinking out loud about the artists and artworks she’s selected. It is one day before the opening, and the finishing touches are still being polished as handlers unwrap works by Abigail Lucien, Ashley Teamer, Charisse Weston, David Hammons, Kerry James Marshall, Lorraine O’Grady, Max Guy, Nandi Loaf and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
In the entrance at Nicola Vassell, a vibrant domed shaped painting activates the room, featuring fallen trees and two feet in pink shoes evoking Dorothy— or perhaps The Wicked Witch of the West? — from The Wizard of Oz. Joeonna explains how it functions in conversation with Max Guy’s The City and the City (7th Cut), a video piece juxtaposing The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz hanging at Jack Shainman down the street. “I just love the relationship here, and this idea of breaking through space,” she says as we continue, pointing to a series of jet-black cut-out sculptures — also by Max Guy — mounted on the floor, that seem to spill out from a black and blue fence resembling a folding dressing screen by Abigail Lucien.
“So much of the work, I think about in terms of this kind of slippage,” Jo says, referring to the expansive web of visual threads connecting each piece. “All of the artists work in a multitude of ways.”
This idea of slippage takes on deepened layers of meaning as we move between artworks, between galleries, and between her roles serving as Senior Director at Jack Shainman, and founder of We Buy Gold, her independent project and roving art space launched in 2017, with the mission of troubling traditional modes of exhibition and exchange in the art world.
Joined by Nicola, her long-time friend and collaborator, we discuss reviving We Buy Gold for a seventh show, post-hiatus, what it means for Black voices to occupy space in Chelsea and the lasting power of friendship.
You were saying that world-building is such a buzzword right now, so you hesitate to use it even though it’s at the core of this exhibition. Can you say more about that?
Artists build worlds for us, and are building worlds for themselves within their own practices. The function of artists is to teach us ways to think about the world, right? They build and come up with new things. I feel like at any given moment, we talk about all of the chaos that we’re in. For me, world-building is about maintaining sanity.
How did you think about distributing the work across the two galleries?
The concept of two spaces really comes out of both Jack and Nicola wanting to participate. I’ve known Nicola for as long as I’ve been in this, you know, 15 years. She’s someone that… she’s probably why I was able to hang in there at certain earlier points of my career.
For me, in the beginning, it was very important for me to see that there was somebody else, you know? There were only a few of us. There are not a lot of galleries or maybe even any that I would’ve considered doing this with. Doing We Buy Gold in Chelsea, was also something that I swore I’d never do.
Oh really? Why is that?
Yeah, I mean, it started in Bed-Stuy. I lived around the corner. I was like 50 feet from my door. I was working with artists who were showing amazing, really powerful work. I wanted to make the kind of shows that we would see here in this very institutional space of Chelsea, but make them in places that were like our home, my home. In a very personal way, wanting that to be closer.
It just felt like I was of two worlds, you know? It’s like you leave home, and you come here. I needed something to bridge that. Building the space that I wanted. I hope other people felt like that was necessary too.
So much Black art and creativity comes up out of that kind of cognitive dissonance, the feeling of living between “two worlds”.
Right, exactly. I always wanted to resist the idea that something needs to happen in Chelsea in order for it to be valued in a certain way. It took a while for me to get over that hump. And then I realized that that was just a rule that I made up for myself and that actually, I can break that.
It’s like a maturity moment, reflecting that, we could just change that. The conversation has changed too. I mean the conversation has changed since 2017 [when We Buy Gold first launched], kind of drastically, right? So there are different ways that we can try to resist institutionalization and think about access.
Lynette [Yiadom-Boakye] did a text work that was made for this show. We have the original drawing here, and then we have the print that everyone can take. For me that was important, thinking about access. It’s so important for me to always engage with how people can participate. I just wanted something that everybody could have.
[Nicola joins us in the back room of the gallery]: Nicola, We were just talking about, your relationship and history. From your perspective, why this show, and why now?
I really wanted to hear from Joe, frankly. Joe has such a keen eye, a great sense of what is coming out of the new artist community. If you look at her track record and some of the artists she brought to the table, several are really outperforming right now.
I also think she’s great at identifying great people who work in 3D sculpture. We’re kind of a painting gallery, so it’s nice to have a little bit of a shake-up, you know, some fresh ideas, some fresh material. And really to adjust spatially, and offer a new way to interact with the space here.
It threads really nicely with this idea of world-building we were talking about earlier, and creating new realities. I wonder if that excites you too?
Of course. I think this immediate post-pandemic period is endlessly fascinating in the way that new landscapes are are are being built. They’re being derived. And the question is, how is it being constructed? What are the seeds, and who are the planters? World-building is the actual name of that exercise. Therefore it is important for gallerists like Joeanna and myself to be very much participatory. To have a hand in what this new landscape looks like because the world is calling for it. You know, I think the vox populi is calling for it. We’re really just answering call.
SEVEN is on view at Jack Shainman Gallery and Nicola Vassell Gallery through August 11th.
Credits
Images courtesy of We Buy Gold, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.