Featuring new and recent works by New York-based artists Enrique Garcia, Tamiko Kawata, Athena LaTocha, marlow magdalene, mujero, Kayode Ojo, Kevin Reuning, Irgin Sena, and Rebecca Shapass.

The artists all employ metal as a material in their practice - whether hand-cast, found, appropriated, or augmented with print, dye, scratching, painting or other processes such as anodizing. In the sculptures, assemblages and other three dimensional works on view, the artists’ emphases are less on the signifiers of brilliance, strength, and power that are so often associated with metal, but rather on themes of lifelines, vulnerability and protection, particularly in relationship to labor, the environment, gender roles and identity, political and economic systems, as well as history and memory.

Traversing both gallery rooms, overhead and just out of reach, Rebecca Shapass “Lifeline” acknowledges the work of laborers, and more specifically those of miners who throughout history and still to this day continue to risk their lives at their jobs while helping to make other’s lives more comfortable. The work’s title references the escape lines that miners follow to safety after explosions or other low visibility situations. The directional cone and sphere markers along the thick steel wire were cast from those used on an actual mine safety line and poured by the artist in a blast furnace in Pittsburgh.

Athena LaTocha’s small-scale sculptures from the artist’s “Mesabi” series speak to the environmental damage of industrial mining. The delicate, almost lace-like appearances of the works are the result of a process of casting through the “freestyle pouring of molten iron into a bed of sand” at an iron deposit located in the Northern Minnesota’s Mountain Mesabi Range, an area which is LaTocha’s ancestral homeland.

The under-appreciated labor of women as well as the workers behind mass-production is represented by Tamiko Kawata’s sculptures “Silver Cloud” and “Ascending-3,” both built with hundreds of meticulously positioned safety pins, a material the artist began working with shortly after her move to New York City from Japan in 1961, when she resorted to using the pins to hem up her new American clothes that were all too large.

marlow magdalene’s “Torso” is a life-size chest binder that resembles protective armor or a shield. The piece, which is composed of chicken wire, alloy steel sheets, and stainless steel hoses from his father’s former auto shop and at a downtown LA junkyard where his mother used to dumpster dive, also employs artistic methods influenced by Black assemblage.

Explorations of masculinity and femininity and the tensions in between are manifest within the works “Homogeny of Man; Semiotic Circuit” and “Orchid for Sylvia” by mujero. Prominently featured in both works are pairs of disassembled Air Jordans that the artist has coated with silver spray and joined or suspended by steel wire to reference the gendered performative nature of “sneaker culture” that they felt in their youth were unable to match.

Kayode Ojo’s “Half-life 15,” among other themes, hints at the addictive nature cf consumerism and the disappointments of capitalism. The four elements of this installation, including two large, non-firing prop guns, are precisely positioned on the mirrored surface and shelves of a shiny console table. As in other works by the artist, the piece’s specifications include the original online sales listing of each item.

Kevin Reuning’s works on view are part of a new series made entirely from aluminum frame stretcher bars that began with his learning about aluminum’s significance in fascist Italy, where it had been promoted as “the metal of the future,” a national metal, and used in advertising campaigns. Reuning’s use of the processes of dying and anodizing - which makes the material stronger and is used in products such as iPhones and iMacs - turns our attention to the close connections between industry and government, corruption and greed usually at the expense of their customers, constituents or workers.

The wall works “45 two” and “57 four” by Irgin Sena, who came of age in Albania as the Soviet Union collapsed, are part of an ongoing series dealing with themes of destruction “be it manmade, caused by natural disasters or a combination of both.” The artist has drawn with a needle onto the highly reflective aluminum images of a semi-collapsed building in the first - which is accompanied by its own shadow hand-drawn directly on the wall - and of a destroyed house and a gun in the second. The works are further manipulated with various methods such as cutting, bending, and painting, with each being titled using a numbering system as if it were a record in an archive.

Lastly, in “Navel (Zócalo)” Enrique Garcia considers the past and present of two colonial locations in Mexico: La Antigua in Veracruz, which he describes as “an early failed Spanish settlement where a house allegedly belonging to Hernán Cortés still stands,” and the Zócalo in Mexico City “where the Spanish built over a ceremonial space of the Aztec.” The title of the work acknowledges the Cortés building as the first ordered by Spain to be built in the Americas as the “first wound, or scar,” highlighting the randomness of what survives time and its impact on history and memory.

Enrique Garcia’s practice explores the processes that drive erasure, decay, and replication of form. Touching on history, colonialism, and the consequences of technology, his work centers on the paradoxical relationship between creation and destruction. Through varied references–from ancient ruins, celestial objects, to modern technology– his work elicits the sublime while provoking reflection on the meaning of human progress. Garcia studied Sculpture at Pratt Institute and has participated in fellowships at Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, NY) and Triangle Arts (Brooklyn, NY). His work has been shown at N.A.S.A.L. (MX), Aro (MX), and SculptureCenter (NY). He lives and works between New York and Mexico City.

Born in Kobe in 1936, Tamiko Kawata came of age in post-war Japan. As such, a persistent defiance of traditional gender roles and class hierarchies became core to both her personal and professional mission. Kawata studied Sculpture at the University of Tsukuba / Tokyo University of Education, where she embraced Bauhaus design principles and the avant-garde aesthetic philosophies of Dada and Gutai, breaking free from the dominant “École de Paris” curricula popular in Japan at the time. After graduating in 1959, Kawata worked as an artist-designer with Kagami Crystal Glass Works in Tokyo and, as the company’s first woman designer, earned the second highest salary in the nation, and the highest national women’s salary at age 23. In 1961, satisfied with her glass work and seeking to escape the prevailing expectations of marriage, Kawata immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City in 1962 where she continues to live and work.

Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds, in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, soils and wood, looking mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are informed by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic histories that are rooted in place. LaTocha’s work has been shown at MoMA P.S.1 in Long Island City, New York; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, New Jersey; Smack Mellon, The Green-Wood Cemetery, and BRIC House, Brooklyn, New York; CUE Art Foundation and Artists Space, New York City; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska. LaTocha is the recipient of artist grants and awards, among them the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2024); Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2023); Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship (2023); Rockefeller Brothers Fund Pocantico Art Prize in Visual Arts (2022); Eiteljorg Fellowship, the National Academy Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting (2021); Joan Mitchell Foundation (2019, 2016); Wave Hill (2018); and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2013). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, The Art Newspaper, BOMB and Hyperallergic. LaTocha received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stony Brook University, New York. The artist lives and works in New York.

marlow magdalene (b. 1994 Los Angeles) is an experimental visual artist working in moving image, performance, and sculpture. After receiving a Bachelor’s in Fine Art from the University of California, Berkeley in Film and Media Studies and African American History, he went on to complete residencies at SF MOMA, SFFILM, and Minnesota Street Project. His piece, Velvet Rain, opened for Sun Ra Arkestra at the Ukrainian Culture Center in Los Angeles. He later received grants from the Kennedy Center and awards of recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee and former Vice President Kamala D. Harris. He has exhibited and screened work at the National Museum of African American History, Museum of the African Diaspora, Kennedy Center, MOCA, Carnegie Mellon, Human Resources, San Francisco Grace Cathedral, Wexner Center for Arts, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. He’s given artist talks at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Through his work, he brings the theories of Black radical thinkers to life through assemblage sculpture by suturing metal scraps into wearable binders and harnesses that externalize the physical pain of concealing a body’s gender. For the audience, the metal front is seen as smooth armor while the jagged metal of the back reveals years of contortion and how over time the metal becomes enmeshed with the bones of the body. He’s pursuing his MFA at Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and continuing to make work that delves into the transgressive space of collective memory, Black social death, and trans abjection.

mujero (b. 1996, New York, NY) is a New York based artist working in sculpture, video, and performance. Since obtaining a BFA from Parsons School of Design, they have exhibited in galleries and spaces including Sargent’s Daughters, The Latinx Project, and Silber Galleries at Goucher College. They will participate in their first institutional show at the ICA at Virginia Commonwealth University in June 2025.

Kayode Ojo (*1990, Cookeville, TN, US) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Sweetwater, Berlin (2024) and 52 Walker, New York (2023). His work has also been exhibited in group exhibitions at the CCS Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; White Columns, New York; Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover; MoMA PS1, New York; and the Athens Biennale, among others, and is featured in the permanent collections of the CCS Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; the Museum Brandhorst, Munich; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. He has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Frieze, Mousse, The New York Times, and Texte zur Kunst. Ojo received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2012.

Kevin Reuning (b.1989) is a Brooklyn-based artist working primarily with digital art, video, installation, and sculpture. His work often involves visual explorations of the tools the artist uses to build virtual worlds, but while almost all his work begins in the computer with 3D animation, it frequently evolves into a work in a medium that is more tactile than an image on a screen. The artist’s work has appeared in two solo exhibitions and three group exhibitions at the gallery, as well as at Pratt Digital Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; NurtureArt, Brooklyn, NY; Boston Univeristy Arts Gallery, Boston, MA; and as part of Frieze x Ray Johnson Project at Frieze New York, among others. His work has been discussed in Artsy, ARTNews, ArtObserved, LVL3 (interview), The New York Times, and others. Publications include his ebook “A Few Visuals” and the zine “A Sphere,” distriubted by Printed Matter. Reuning’s work is currently on view in the exhibition “Digital Wellness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film” at Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), Los Angeles, LA through July of 2025.

Irgin Sena was born in Albania and lives and works in New York. He has a MFA from Hunter College. In 2008 and 2012-13 he was an artist in residency at (ISCP), (NY). In 2012 he was awarded the MARIAN NETTER Award, in 2007 the (ARDHJE Award for Contemporary Art). Irgin has participated at Prospectif Cinéma, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, at Qui Vive, International Moscow Biennial for Young Art in (Moscow), at Tirana Bienale 3 in (Tirana) and New Insight, curated by Susanne Ghez (Chicago). He has shown at Invisible Exports Gallery in (NYC), Mixed Greens Gallery in (NYC), Badischer-Kunstverein in Karlsruhe (Germany); at Fresh Window Gallery (Brooklyn), National Gallery of Arts in Tirana (Albania),Haus am Lutzowplatz Berlin (Germany) and Embajada in San Juan (Puerto Rico) among others.

Rebecca Shapass is a filmmaker and artist investigating documentary form and archival practice through the creation of film & video, photo, installation, and text. Her work has been exhibited and screened with institutions and festivals including Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Miller ICA (Pittsburgh, PA), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Knockdown Center (Queens, NY), Ann Arbor Film Festival (Ann Arbor, MI), Mimesis Documentary Festival (Boulder, CO), amongst others. She is a 2025 artist-in-residence at the Mattress Factory Museum (Pittsburgh, PA). In 2023 she was granted a Creative Development Award from the Heinz Endowment (Pittsburgh). Shapass holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and BFA in Film & Television and Art History from New York University.