State of Flux: Meriem Bennani, Nicholas Grafia, Josh Kline and Pow Martinez

January 12, 2023 – March 4, 2023
Silverlens
505 W 24th St
New York, NY

Image courtesy of the event organizer.

Silverlens New York is pleased to announce State of Flux, a group exhibition organized by independent curator Jeanette Bisschops, featuring works by Meriem Bennani, Nicholas Grafia, Josh Kline, and Pow Martinez and a US performance debut by Grafia and long-time collaborator Mikołaj Sobczak on February 10th and 11th. Continuing in the tradition of international partnerships, the gallery collaborated with Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles and New York; 47 Canal, New York; and Peres Projects, Berlin, Seoul, and Milan. State of Flux opens on January 12, 2023.

State of Flux examines shapeshifting and humor as protective adaptations to geopolitics and the perils of contemporary existence. The show brings together four artists of the diaspora who wield absurdism to guide viewers through the streams and ruptures of our virtual and corporeal lives. Their eulogy for our solid form is a comic one, testifying to the idea of shapeshifting as an age-old trait intrinsic to humankind.

Maneuvering between the aesthetics of reality television, documentary, and animation, Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco; lives and works in New York) will show Guided Tour of a Spill (CAPS Interlude) (2018) for the first time in New York. The piece is the second in Bennani’s groundbreaking LIFE ON THE CAPS (trilogy), a pseudodocumentary series about a fictitious island run by the American military complex that sustains a detention camp for teleporting migrants. It is the sequence’s sensorial, lyrical interlude and an unsettling but amusing collision of geopolitics, dance, athletics, and humor.

In paintings by Nicholas Grafia (b.1990, Angeles City, Philippines; lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Paris, France), figures move fluidly between genders, skin tones, psychologies, and time as a magical subversion of global power structures. The artist’s practice spans time-based media, painting, and performance to tangle with systems of oppression and his liminal experience growing up between Europe and Southeast Asia.

On February 10th and 11th, Grafia and Mikołaj Sobczak (b. 1989, Poznań, Poland; lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) make their US performance debut, restaging Peasants. Referring to a time of exploitation and revolution, Peasants harnesses spoken word, choreography, and disguise to cast a light upon social hierarchies still present today. Sobczak’s solo show is currently on view at Kunsthalle Münster through January 2023.

Ahead of his 2023 retrospective at The Whitney, Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia, PA; lives and works in New York, NY) presents never-before-shown sculptures building on a long-term body of work in visceral critique of American social-political breakdown. Ready-mades are perverted with new upholstery cut from the uniforms of iconic Alt-Right leaders–a Barbour jacket for Steve Bannon, a polo shirt for Richard Spencer. Kline’s unequivocal practice uses emerging technologies, video, and installation to break glass on the emergencies of climate change, automation, disease, and the weakening of democracy.

On the heels of his successful solo show at Silverlens’ Manila gallery, Pow Martinez (b. Manila, Philippines, lives and works Manila) will present a number of ludicrous new paintings in his defining mischievous style. Present are iconic characters that have starred in Martinez’s narrative paintings for 20+ years—lewd cavemen, blow-up dolls, ghosts, and the specter of American camouflage. Martinez takes his inspiration primarily from YouTube, watching videos as he works and transposing the imagery in real time. Taken all together, the works poke at soft (and sometimes hard) power and the export of American pop-culture.

State of Flux is on view at the gallery through March 4, 2023.

Jeanette Bisschops is an independent Dutch curator, art critic and writer residing in New York. She was Curatorial Fellow at the New Museum, New York between 2019 and 2022 and served as Curatorial Assistant for Time-Based Media at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam between 2016-2019. She holds a Master’s in Psychology from Maastricht University and a Master’s in Art History from the University of Amsterdam.

Meriem Bennani (b. 1988, Rabat, Morocco; lives and works in New York) received her BFA from Cooper Union, New York in 2012, and her MFA from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris in 2011. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at C L E A R I N G Brooklyn; The Kitchen, New York; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Art Dubai; MoMA PS1, New York; and SIGNAL, Brooklyn. Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Whitney Biennial, New York; Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Geneva / Turin; Public Art Fund, New York; Shanghai Biennale; Jewish Museum, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London; MANA Contemporary, New Jersey; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Her exhibition, Party on the CAPS, is currently on view at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin. Later in 2020, she will have a public commission at LAX airport. Meriem Bennani’s work is part of the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Kadist Foundation, Paris; and FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris.

Nicholas Grafia (b.1990, Angeles City; based in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Paris, France), holds an MFA from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (DE). He has previously studied at the School of Arts and Cultures in Newcastle (UK), the Kunstakademie Münster (DE), as well as the University of Münster (DE).

His paintings, videos and performances negotiate processes of memory formation, as well as the in- and exclusion of subjects from history writing.

His work has been recently exhibited at KW (Berlin, DE), MoMa (Warsaw, PL), HKW (Berlin, DE), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, DK), Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen, NO), 7th Moscow International Biennale For Young Art (Moscow, RU), Shedhalle (Zurich, SUI), Museum Ludwig (Cologne, DE), Dortmunder Kunstverein (Dortmund, DE), and MUDAM (Luxembourg, LU), and Silverlens Manila (Manila, PH) amongst other venues.

Josh Kline’s (b. 1979, Philadelphia, PA; lives and works in New York, NY) recent solo exhibitions include Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2016); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (2016); 47 Canal, New York City, NY (2016); and Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2015). Kline has been included in groups shows such as Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY (2016); the Fellbach Small Sculpture Triennial, Fellbach (2016); 9th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2016); Life Itself, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2016); Suspended Animation, Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2016); America is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2015); Overtime: The Art of Work, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2015); 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum, New York City, NY (2015); Looking Back/The 9th White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York City, NY (2015); ica@50: Pleasing Artists And Publics Since 1963, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (2014); Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel (2013); and New Pictures of Common Objects, MoMA/PS1, Long Island City, NY, USA (2012).

In Spring 2023, the Whitney will present the first U.S. museum survey of the artist’s work. This exhibition is organized by Christopher Y. Lew, former Nancy and Fred Poses Curator at the Whitney and current Chief Artistic Director at the Horizon Art Foundation, with McClain Groff, Curatorial Project Assistant.

Pow Martinez (b. Manila, Philippines, lives and works Manila) is a recipient of the 2010 Ateneo Art Award for his exhibition 1 Billion Years at West Gallery, Philippines. His recent exhibitions include Clunker (2022) at Silverlens Manila, Underground Spiritual Unit (2022) at Galeria Yusto/Giner, Madrid, City Prince/sses (2019) at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, 50 Years in Hollywood (2019) at Pinto Art Museum in New York, and Aesthetic Police (2018) at ROH Projects, Jakarta. Through his comically distorted portraits and satirical paintings, Martinez is known for his commentary on the medium of painting, social media culture, and Philippine history.

More Information

Asia Art Archive
in America

Asia Art Archive
in America

State of Flux: Meriem Bennani, Nicholas Grafia, Josh Kline and Pow Martinez

January 12, 2023 – March 4, 2023
Silverlens
505 W 24th St
New York, NY