“Read My Lips: Loren Britton & Kerry Downey” at the Knockdown Center

Country:

City:

Loren Britton, Bud, 2015, Canvas, Velvet, Polyfil

Read My Lips


 

Opening reception Nov 5, 7 – 9pm
Oct 28 – Dec 18


Read My Lips brings together recent paintings and sculpture made by Loren Britton and video and prints by Kerry Downey. Although working in different media, both artists tangle with representing marginalized bodies, problems of language, and the complexity of subject formation in a binary world.

Downey’s textured monotypes, many of which are embossed or use chine-collé, hang alongside Britton’s anthropomorphic plush sculpture and large four-by-five foot paintings, which sit on blocks. Downey’s projected video piece is paired with several more of Britton’s sculptures — these made to be used as seating.

Both series of work are grounded in a consideration of embodiment. The exhibition title takes the mouth specifically as a site from which to examine some of the central issues of this show: It is a source of language, an entrance to the interior, and a site of desire.

These artists also explore a politic of non-visibility through languages of abstraction. Refusing visibility is an important tenet of the constellation of art practices that have been termed Queer Abstraction, a moniker not without its own limitations.  While many queer and feminist artists — Harmony Hammond, Louise Fishman, Joan Snyder, to name just a few — have worked in abstraction since the 1970s, a new generation of queer, genderqueer, and transgender artists are taking up the style to deal with issues of gender, and in this case, to talk about the body without explicitly signifying it.  In his recent research, art historian David J. Getsy has asked, “What happens when the body is invoked but not imaged?”

In such a mode of image-making, abstract art exceeds binary constraint; the body is posited as a catalog of sensory experiences and a place of flux. In Britton and Downey’s hands, abstraction becomes a space of infinite possibility where multiplicity is the principal feature. The work plunges us into indeterminacy and makes us step outside of prevailing modes of understanding selfhood and language. There is no finality, no fixed meaning, no stability.

Programming
November 5: Opening reception, 7pm-9pm (After party with DJ Robi D Light 9pm-late)
November 12, Round table discussion, 5pm
December 8: Poetry reading, 8pm
December 16: WOAHMONE party, 10pm-late

Loren Britton is an artist and curator based in New Haven, CT. Britton’s work explores hybridity in image and form. They create things that exist between drawing, painting, and sculpture. Their work exists in relationship to the body and seeks to reimagine the possibilities of embodied language. Britton has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions at Boston University, Boston, MA; Scott Charmin Gallery, Houston, TX; LTD Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Vanity Projects, Miami, FL; Field Projects, New York, NY; Pelham Arts Center, Pelham, NY; Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany; and Siena Arts Institute, Siena, Italy. Britton has participated in residency programs at Eastside International, Los Angeles, USA and Studio Kura, Fukuoka, Japan. Britton holds a BFA & BA from SUNY Purchase and they are currently an MFA candidate in Painting at the Yale School of Art.

Kerry Downey (born Fort Lauderdale, 1979) is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher based in New York City. Downey’s work explores how we interact with each other physically, psychologically, and socio-politically. Encompassing video, printmaking, and performance, their work wrestles with the possibilities and limitations of gender, intimacy, and relationality in late capitalist America. Recent exhibition venues include the Queens Museum, Flushing, NY; EFA Project Space, New York, NY; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale, NY; the Drawing Center, New York, NY; and Taylor Macklin, Zurich, Switzerland.  In 2015, Downey was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.  Residencies and Fellowships include SHIFT at the EFA Project Space, the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, Real Time and Space in Oakland, CA, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellowship. They hold a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Hunter College.

Ashton Cooper is a Brooklyn-based independent writer and curator. This past summer, she curated “Mal Maison” at Maccarone in New York. Recent writing projects include an essay for a publication on artist Ellen Cantor to be released by Capricious in late 2016 as well as a catalog essay for Mira Dancy’s exhibition at the Yuz Museum in Shanghai. Her writing has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Modern Painters, Hyperallergic, Artinfo.com, Cultured, Art + Auction, Pelican Bomb, ASAP Journal, and Jezebel. She contributed the essay “The Problem of the Overlooked Female Artist: An Argument for Enlivening a Stale Model of Discussion” to the exhibition catalog for “Lucid Gestures” at the McCagg Gallery at Barnard College. She is the director of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.

Read My Lips is presented with the generous support of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Call for Entries

Criterion Capital

London

Design Dalston’s Future: Kingsland Shopping Centre Launches £2,000 Logo Design Competition

05/September/2025

Call for Entries

International Awards Associate

New York

2025 Noble World Hotel Awards: Season 2

09/September/2025

Call for Artists

Arte Laguna Prize

Venice

Arte Laguna Prize 20

31/July/2025

Call for Submissions

Nexus Artspace

Online

Unwritten Maps: Belonging Beyond Borders

20/August/2025

Residency

Space A

Kathmandu

KIAR 2026 - Spring (Kathmandu International Artist in Residency)

14/July/2025

Call for Entries

City of Ocala, Recreation and Parks - Cultural Arts and Sciences

Ocala

8th Biennial Ocala Outdoor Sculpture Competition

25/August/2025

Call for Artists

Cromer Artspace

Cromer

Cromer Open Call 2025

02/September/2025

Call for Artists

Barbagelata Contemporary Art Foundation

#international #Global #online

Open Call: Artist Interviews

31/July/2025

Residency

Ucross Foundation

Sheridan

Ucross Artist Residency Spring 2026 Open Call

15/July/2025

Call for Artists

London Art Collective

London

ArtEvol 2025: Voices from the Undefined

19/August/2025

Residency

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

Canmore

Toga da wôhnagabi: Music Creation Residency 2026

20/August/2025

Call for Entries

Art Gotham

New York

The Blue Show

20/July/2025

Contest

WhiteLock Art Center

New York

2025 New York International Art Competition -The Light from the Other Shore

17/July/2025

Residency

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

Banff

Deep Winter Writers 2026

20/August/2025

Call for Artists

East Hampton

ART AFFICHE *think playbill

04/August/2025

Residency

Ucross Foundation

Clearmont

Spring 2026 Open Call Ucross Fellowship for Native American Artists

15/July/2025

Call for Submissions

PleinAir Magazine

Boca Raton/Online

July PleinAir Salon Online Art Competition

31/July/2025

Call for Artists

Lena Snow

Karlsruhe/Germany Online

Open Call for solo exhibition, magazine feature, interview

31/July/2025

Call for Entries

International Awards Associate

Online, New York, International

2025 European Photography Awards

15/August/2025