NEW YORK, NY.- Denny Dimin Gallery is presenting Kadosh a gathering of artists curated by Robert Dimin. The exhibition is on view from July 11 to August 16, 2019. Kadosh, a Hebrew word for holy, presents work by Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Amir H. Fallah, Cameron Welch, Jillian Mayer, Kennedy Yanko, and L.
What is Holy? Throughout history artists have contributed to their spiritual communities by bringing scripture into the here and now. Their visual manifestations of religious doctrine have been a touchpoint for devotees of many religions, while in other faiths the act of artistic creation is itself a form of devotion.
Today, in an increasingly secular world, many of us in the art world elevate art to a level of religious devotion. With that said, artists still commonly investigate more traditional ideas of religiosity. Many artists still work in the religion-rooted traditions of stained glass, mosaics, and spell casting. Meanwhile, others experiment with objects and obsessions worshiped by today’s society such as durags and social media. Each artist draws on their own individual philosophies and histories as they question the metaphysical and spiritual in the studio.
Anthony O. Akinbola (b. 1991, Columbia, MO), is a Nigerian-American interdisciplinary artist who employs the ready made motif in relation to the human experience and history. Attuned to the void between artistic intention and the viewer’s own comprehension, Akinbola transforms this chasm into a discourse of sorts, using it as a source of creative energy. Last summer, Akinbola installed an 8 x 40’ public artwork CAMOUFLAGE with the Queens Museum, and will start a fellowship with the New York Museum of Art and Design in August.
Amir H. Fallah’s (b. 1979, Tehran, Iran) is known for making unconventional portraits of people he encounters (or seeks out) which explore identity and personal narrative through his subjects’ interactions with objects. Fallah has been working with Denny Dimin Gallery since 2017. Fallah will have his first major museum retrospective at MOCA Tucson in 2020.
Cameron Welch (b. 1990, Indianapolis, IN) intertwines, paints, and assembles various found materials such as CDs, brooms and mirrors, in a method commonly used in antiquity, to form scenes from his own mythology. Welch most recently had a solo show at Nino Mier gallery in Los Angeles, and a pop-up exhibition with Rental Gallery.
Jillian Mayer (b. 1986, Miami, FL) explores how technology affects our lives, bodies, and identities using video, sculpture, the internet, photography, performances, and installations. She has shown at The Pérez Art Museum, David Castillo Gallery, MoMA PS1, The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Bass Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum as well as many other galleries and institutions.
Kennedy Yanko (b. 1988, St. Louis, MO) is a sculptor who searches salvage yards for cast-off materials–such as copper, marble, and tin–that she then combines with poured paint that she refers to as “paint skins”. Yanko first exhibited with Denny Dimin Gallery this past February. Yanko has a forthcoming exhibition at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago as well as a large public installation project with Art-in-Buildings (AiB) in New York City, this fall.
L (b. 1984, Salt Lake City, UT) first met Robert Dimin in 2013 while participating in The Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2013. Dimin then curated him into an exhibition in 2014 as a barter arrangement between them under the terms of L’s piece. More recently L presented a pop-up exhibition of spells in Los Angeles, ASTRAL ORACLES at The Newsstand Project in 2018. L currently has a solo exhibition at Marlborough in New York City through August 2nd.
