Interviews by Brainard Carey

Karla Knight in her studio Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to announce Universal Remote, a solo exhibition of new work for artist Karla Knight, running from November 3 – December 22, 2023.  A solo display of Knight’s work will be held concurrently at The Art Show (ADAA) at the Park Avenue Armory from November 1–5. Over the past four decades, Knight has executed her idiosyncratic visons of UFO related imagery with the stubborn persistence of an artist unbeholden to the dictates of art world trends, although contemporary interest in spiritualist art has certainly offered a favorable context. Knight’s relationship with what might be broadly termed “the occult” is rooted in her upbringing; her father authored publications on, among other subjects, UFOs and ghosts, and her grandfather, also a writer, penned a book about afterlife communication. Her solo exhibition at the Aldrich Museum in 2021-22 expanded Knight’s recognition markedly and came at the same time she was beginning to experiment with weathered feedbags from the 1940s and ’50s, attracted to their creamy color and the traces they bore of past lives. She calls these works “tapestries,” as she embroiders the fabric and embellishes it with a combination of acrylic paint pens, vinyl paint, colored pencil, and graphite. Her new Universal Remote series of drawings and tapestries riffs on the notion of channels with central motifs inspired by anachronistic television sets that hail from the early decades of the Cold War; a time when the frequency of UFO sightings was a source of great national anxiety. The tapestry Universal Remote 1, 2022, is painted with a boxy television-like form—or “receiver,” a word the artist relishes—bearing her cryptic characters along with circles that suggest various dials and buttons: channel selectors, speakers, fine tuners, picture expanders. A large, rounded shape marked with blue crosshatching and abstract designs, some of which resemble yellow eyes with slivered pupils, overtakes the “screen.” At the mandala’s heart is Knight’s returning volumetric orb, here coronated with concentric circles. This celestial sphere’s significance denoted by its centrality to the composition, becomes a kind of universal picture, open to an endlessly expanding universe of possible readings. Karla Knight’s work is currently featured in the group exhibition, Sightings, at the Sun Valley Museum of Art (ID), and is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), among others. A second edition of her Aldrich Museum exhibition catalogue, Navigator, with added images of recent works and a new essay by Cassie Packard will be available on November 1, 2023. Karla Knight (b. 1958) Big Night Vision, 2023 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 46 x 73 inches Karla Knight (b. 1958) Delphi 3, 2023 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 33.5 x 30 inches Karla Knight (b. 1958) Universal Remote 1, 2022 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 68 x 49 inches.

Alva Mooses photographed by Mauricio Cortes Ortega at Shandaken Projects, Governor's Island 2023. Alva Mooses is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work explores the intersections of printed media, ceramics, and sculpture while engaging with earth-based materials to signal the memory of geological time. Her ceramic series titled ear to the earth/ culebra, truena, tormenta was exhibited at Jane Hartsook Gallery as part of her artist residency at Greenwich House Pottery. The slip-cast reconfigured globes move away from historical representations of the earth as a perfect sphere on a steady axis toward a transformative body—the pieces are glazed, distorted, mended, and kiln-fired multiple times. culebra, truena, tormenta translates to snake, thunder, storm, referring to the Mexica earth and mother goddess Coatlicue whose entire skirt, head, and belt represent snakes. The legendery 16th century Coatlicue statue was buried and unearthed multiple times since the Spanish conquest out of concern that the statue would inspire religious and political resistance; it now lives in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The writer Mirene Arsanios describes Alva’s ceramic globe series as: “Broken or no longer erect, the globe stands and their measuring systems are inoperative—the deconstructed globes undermine the project of western geography and the violence of its measuring tools, favoring instead a world, earth, and planet governed by the erotics of its own materials.” Alva holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited her work in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. She has completed fellowships and residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop, Shandaken Projects, Socrates Sculpture Park, Center for Book Arts, Greenwich House Pottery, The University of Chicago, Tou Trykk in Stavanger, Norway, and Casa Wabi, in Oaxaca, Mexico, among others. She serves on the faculty at Hunter College in the Department of Art and Art History and lives with her daughter and partner in Brooklyn. ear to the earth/ culebra, truena, tormenta, 2022 | ceramic | 20x15x8 inches | Photo by Alan Wiener courtesy of Greenwich House Pottery. ear to the earth/ culebra, truena, tormenta, 2022 | ceramic | 16x10x9 inches | Photo by Alan Wiener courtesy of Greenwich House Pottery. Undercurrents, 2023 | Drawing with CNC machine | 13x17 inches

Matthew Kirk’s (Navajo Nation) practice combines the materiality of his long-held job as an art-handler with mark-making inspired by comics, abstraction, and Diné (Navajo) visuality. A 2019 Eiteljorg Fellow, his work was recently featured in The New York Times. His recent solo exhibition White Snake (2023) was presented at Halsey McKay Gallery in New York City. Kirk was born in Arizona, raised in Wisconsin, and is based in Queens, New York. Waste Is A Thief, 2023 Wood, acrylic, ink. graphite, leather, coroplast, insulation foam, hardware, wire, canvas 63 x 60.5 x 6 inches (160 x 153.7 x 15.2 cm) Save That Chitter Chatter, 2023 Wood, acrylic, ink, graphite, Nerf, hardware, cotton strap 35.25 x 46.75 inches (89.5 x 118.7 cm) I'll Sing Along, 2023 Canvas, acylic, graphite, hardware, basketball rim, rope, hardware, wood 58.5 x 35 x 7 inches (148.6 x 88.9 x 17.8 cm)

Cyle Warner is a Brooklyn-based artist of Afro-Caribbean descent. A recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts with a BFA in Photography, he works across mediums, often using fabric and photographs inherited from family to explore his concept of Dis. In 2022 he attended the prestigious Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art. Welancora Gallery is proud to present Weh Dem? De Sparrow Catcher?, a solo exhibition of new work by Cyle Warner (b. 2001), on view from July 27 to October 10, 2023. Warner’s first exhibition at the gallery brings together a reimagined archive of photographs and textiles to reveal a very personal exploration of his family’s life in the Caribbean. Sourced from the Warner family archive, the photographs are layered, recomposed and enlarged to conjure feelings of curiosity about Warner’s elders and their life in the Caribbean. The works on view raise a number of questions; namely, what would life be like if there had been no migration to the United States? The photos, ranging from the mid 1940s to the early to mid 1970s, depict family members when they were permanently residing in the Caribbean. The hazy quality and sepia tones, as well as what’s visible, what’s further highlighted, and what’s left to be desired all lend themselves to the artist’s fractured understanding of a time in the Caribbean that he never experienced first hand. Cyle Warner a vessel a jam slow, 2023 Various fabrics and inkjet on fabric on wooden frame. 76 x 64 inches 193 x 162.6 cms. Photo: Copyright The Artist Courtesy of Welancora Gallery. Cyle Warner Album Page II (Debating with Powell and the Queen), 2023 Various Fabrics and Inkjet on Fabric on Stained Wooden Frame 15 1/2 x 11 inches 39.4 x 27.9 cms. Photo: Copyright The Artist Courtesy of Welancora Gallery. Cyle Warner I don't want to go, 2023 Archival pigment print with collage on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 5 x 7 inches 12.7 x 17.8 cms Edition of 2.

Heather Dewey-Hargborg, American artist and bio-hacker most knowned for the project Stranger Visions. Ana Brígida for The New York Times Dr. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who is interested in art as research and critical practice. Her controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions in which she created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material (such as hair, cigarette butts, or chewed up gum) collected in public places. Heather has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, and the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, the Van Abbemuseum, Transmediale and PS1 MOMA. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wellcome Collection, and the New York Historical Society, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired. Heather has a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a visiting assistant professor of Interactive Media at NYU Abu Dhabi, an artist fellow at AI Now, an Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium, and is an affiliate of Data & Society. Hybrid (Trailer) from Heather Dewey-Hagborg on Vimeo. Installation view, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera. Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery. Still from Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera. Courtesy of the artist and Fridman Gallery.

Jonathan Herbert (b. 1952, New York City) explores the nonverbal relationship between cosmology and consciousness. He creates unique, intuitive formulations of water-based paint using acrylic and urethane media made on the spot, mid-process. He explores the nonverbal nature of creative inspiration via intuition. These works examine the richness of the present moment while simultaneously referring to a concurrent interest in the expression of the past, of his traumatic experiences and resulting emotions. Much of his work has been informed by his extremely abusive childhood and the unsurprisingly drug- and alcohol-ridden years of his life prior to 1986. His experiences as a night shift cab driver in bankrupt New York inspired the years-long body of work, Views from a Yellow Cab. He drove a quarter-million miles over the course of five years. An important and interesting and uncommon view of humankind, as evidenced in the movie Taxi Driver. Herbert received his diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1977. He continued his studies, via an Independent Study Award from the Museum School, for more than a year in Antwerp, Belgium. He began exhibiting in 1978 in Soho and the East Village and has garnered several solo exhibitions. Many of his group shows have been in New York City, including tagging subways and walls in the East Village of the 1970s. In New York in the mid-eighties, shortly after MacPaint had first been released, Herbert was one of the founders of the Digital Art Movement. During his digital years, Silicon Graphics decorated their entire Seybold booth with his work, flew him to San Francisco and asked him to demonstrate his process during the convention. His digital work has been featured internationally. Herbert for years labored lovingly over the creation of digital medical drawings for pharmaceutical books and journals, continuously expanding his education, which fed his fascination with medicine. His work as a digital artist even led to being interviewed on network TV. Herbert’s bibliography begins in December 1982, in the regular Cookie Mueller column “Art and About” in Warhol’s Details Magazine. There is also a Jonathan Herbert entry in the Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia. He has appeared in and been reviewed in many publications. Portraits of Herbert are in both Nightline by Peter Donahoe and Taxi: The Social History of the New York City Cab Driver. Herbert’s work is in the collection of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Brooklyn Art Library, Pfizer Incorporated, the law firm Kirkland and Ellis, and The Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. Herbert currently lives and works in Sarasota, Florida, where, every day, he struggles to live fully in the face of multiple invisible disabilities including lymphoma, PTSD, and cognitive impairment, most of which result from 9/11 survivorship. Across the Universe, Acrylic and urethane on canvas 40 x 60 x 1.5 in Wish, Alchemical acrylic and urethane on canvas 60 x 40 in Shan Shui, acrylic and urethane on canvas 72 x 60 x 1.5 in

Mickalene Thomas Photographed by Malike Sidibe At Yale Gallery for The New York Times Magazine. Mickalene Thomas was born and raised in New Jersey and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. One of the most influential artists in the world today, her innovative practice has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. She is known for her elaborate paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of black and female identity within the Western canon. Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Award nominated co-producer, curator, educator and mentor to many emerging artists. Apart from her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums and collaborates with corporations and luxury brands. In addition to an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the New York Academy of Art (2018) and a United States Artists Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015), she has been awarded multiple other prizes and grants, including the Pratt Institute Legends Award (2022); Rema Hort Mann Foundation 25th Anniversary Honoree (2022); Artistic Impact Award, and more. Thomas is also the  Co-Founder of SOULAS House, a cultural hub and retreat for Black women, the Co-Founder of Pratt>FORWARD and founder of Art>FORWARD Artist in the Market incubator for post-graduate students. Mickalene Thomas, September 1981, 2023. Dye sublimation print and rhinestones, 63.375 x 57.75 x 1.25 in Mickalene Thomas, December 1981, 2023. Dye sublimation print and rhinestones, 58.625 x 48.125 x 3 in Mickalene Thomas, Cover 1981, 2023. Dye sublimation print and rhinestones, 15.125 x 12.25 x 1.625 in

In 2021, Anna Berlin was awarded a Fulbright Research and Study Scholarship to Berlin, Germany, and has since painted between her new home and her family’s house in New Jersey. The paintings weave Berlin’s life with the stories she grew up with about her family, alongside new understanding gained from independent research on her German-Jewish history. The paintings are of a grayscale world, where documentation, legal papers, and everyday ephemera become part of her language of storytelling. The works in Sisters use the monotone language of the bureaucratic documents she relied on in the first year abroad, such as tax forms, proofs of identity, and lists. The visual-verbal governmental speech was sometimes fraught with confusion as she shares her last name with the city, creating reverberations in the artist’s imagination of past and present, person and place, self and family, family history and cultural history. In exploring her new home, the artist accessed a deeper connection to her family’s past in Germany and especially on the role of documents and documentation– how they affected their status, imperiling and saving their lives, as they fled their homes in the 1930s and 1940s to escape the Second World War.  Alongside the personal and legal papers her grandparents brought with them to the US, some that were recently donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., there is also the oral; intergenerational memories that were passed along in car rides or at the kitchen table in New Jersey. Short, diaristic narratives accompany each painting on the Image List. Names of people and places blur together –  Wasser, Berlin, New York, New Jersey – as the generations travel back and forth over water and over land. Earlier this year, Anna Berlin and Olympia released an artist’s book called Notes from Berlin, that is part memoir, part travelog, and part family history. It was printed in an edition of 100 copies and is available at the gallery. Anna Berlin, Two Sisters, 2023, Flashe, acrylic, oil, epoxy dough on canvas, 52 x 40 x 2 in (132.1 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm) Anna Berlin Wasser, 2023 Flashe and acrylic on canvas with two stools made of flashe and acrylic on epoxy dough and foam stools 60.5 x 40 x 10 in (153.7 x 101.6 x 25.4 cm) Anna Berlin The Vollendam, 2023 Flashe, acrylic, epoxy dough on canvas 52 x 40 x 2 in (132.1 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm)

Marleen Sleeuwits (NL), Multidisciplinary artist Marleen Sleeuwits, born in 1980 in Enschede, currently lives and works in The Hague. In 2001 she graduated from the Royal Academy of the Arts with a BA in photography, whereafter she obtained her MA in the same discipline at AKV|St. Joost in 2005. Marleen Sleeuwits has been exhibiting solo and in group exhibitions, in The Netherlands and internationally. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions and art fairs such as: Royal Encounters, a group exhibition at Museum Escher in The Hague, Isomatrix, a solo exhibition at Kunsthal Rotterdam.This year she has two major exhibitions; one solo in the Centre Photographique in Rouen, France and a duo in Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York, U.S.A. Ongoing Series of False Ceilings, Year: 2023, Different sizes, Ultrachromeprint, plaster, false ceiling and wood in plexiglasscontainer. All pieces are unique. Interior no. 53, Year: 2019. Size: 150 x 118 cm. Ultrachromeprint on aluminium in frame with museum glass. Installation view, Radical Intervention. Burned photo-prints, neon paper and mirror. At Sous les Etoiles Gallery, New York, U.S.A., October 2023

Sarah Lubin (Boston, MA) earned a B.A. in Art History from McGill University in 2001, followed by a year in Foundation Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London). She received an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University and an M.F.A. in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Lubin is a two-time recipient of the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant (2019 and 2021). Frames is the artist's fourth solo exhibition with Nancy Margolis Gallery. Sarah Lubin, Index, 2023, oil on canvas, 36 x 60 inches Sarah Lubin, Pink Room, 2023, oil on canvas, 54 x 42 inches Sarah Lubin, Picnic, 2023, oil on canvas, 42 x 54 inches