Exhibitions

Derick Decario Ladale Whitson's Sugar (Chapter II)

SOLO SHOW SELECTION 2021
June 12 - August 8, 2021
On June 12, Kaiser Gallery presents SUGAR (Chapter II), a solo exhibition by Derick Decario Ladale Whitson. Whitson (b. 1991 Mansfield, Ohio) is an artist currently living and working in NYC. Working primarily in photography and video, Whitson explores the history and relationships of clowning, drag queens and black/white face to explore the social constructs of race, gender, and sexuality.

Derick Decario Ladale Whitson has attended artist residencies at AICAD New York Studio Residency Program, NY; Mass MoCA, Massachusetts; The Fountainhead, Miami, FL; and The Galveston Artist Residency. His work has recently been exhibited at Art Basel, Miami, FL; The Studio Museum in Harlem; and The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. Whitson is also a current recipient of the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the 2019 Enfoco Photography Fellowship, & The 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Photography Fellowship. Whitson received his MFA at Columbia University and BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design.
Read Whitson's Bio and Artist Statement

Derick Decario Ladale Whitson

Derick Decario Ladale Whitson (b. 1991, Mansfield, Ohio) lives & works in New York City. Earned his MFA at Columbia University & BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design. Working within the realms of Photography, Video & Performance. Whitson’s work has been published in Miami New Times, Huffington Post, The Advocate Magazine, & Photo-Emphasis. Whitson has participated in many residencies across the U.S., including programs at Mass MoCA, The Fountainhead (Miami), and the AICAD/New York Studio Residency Program. Whitson is also a current recipient of the Foundation For Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the 2019 Enfoco Photography Fellowship, & The 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Photography Fellowship.

Artist Statement

This is your Ego: Words, two words, made up of two words. I’ve waited on the smell of beef stew and the taste of the burned garlic that sizzles the throat. My throat has held tension, it could be the tightness from allergies or the 3 legged dog pose that has become impossible to comfortably release. I’ve found moments of silence, maybe only two, but the background noise of television, irritates my thoughts on the search for a job that will convert me into a citizen. Theres been no quench of my thirst, theres no physical metaphor or reason to continue slurping orange juice. My belly is bloated, it’s beyond the american cheese and meat lovers pizza. The anxiety holds tight onto the gas that introduces itself to my neighbors. Maybe I waited for this? Waited to find that my true lover is longing and the potential, to make believe and form surrealist dreams that remind me of the bones in my sleeves. I have two treasure chests, one in my pores and the other in the sheets when I allow one sock to go because of a fungus thats beneath one curled toe. I had a dream of painting, navigating color relationships on a canvas. I also dreamed of riding my bicycle down a hill that was so steep I could barely break. Ellen is the name, she’s my divination tarot card reader. I’ve never seen her, I’ve never spoken to her, but she reveals a path. Sometimes I hear my own thoughts like a bell, the bell from the toaster oven that invented itself? Is it really true that I could be a combination of everything and every one else, am I made up of other peoples thoughts. There’s something to the color mint green, the green influences my sickness, almost like a tooth decaying in response to a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. I’ve loved once before, he was kind, gentle, sweet, the production of him happened in my dreams. I’ve thought about my dreams once before, they told me theres something to the color yellow, they said it’s like a stench in the air that’s only tainted by the sun. Running doesn’t get me high, it only forces me to create a amount of sympathy, sympathy for my insecurities. I’ve seen this chevron pattern once before, it follows the stripes that mask themselves in red & white, but this time in cotton. Cotton has become a symbol, I’m not sure of what, maybe it’s the mucus that drowned itself in my skin. A rose also carries it’s own symbol, and I don’t mean a projected symbol that signifies the artificial lighting from Christmas lights. I’ve learned two things about breathing, only one represents life. Calvin, what a lovely name, is that because it’s attached to my suit case, or my white underwear that rises in my shorts. I’ve found solace in my longing, time in my heart beat, and a tremor in my waken state. Lets hope my ego has found peace also. ​
Picture
Andrew Ellis Johnson "Insurrection" (2020) Ink on paper. 50 x 113 inches

The Weight of Time

​August 14 - October 10, 2021

'The Weight of Time' is an exhibition that explores the surrealism of a very real global pandemic through introspective works. The novel virus COVID-19 threw the world as we knew it into a situation that we've never seen before. The global pandemic and the shutdowns that followed created disorientating challenges for various people to navigate in different ways while further exposing broken government infrastructure and community ramifications for a world that was not prepared to stop. 

Presenting the works of Chad Eby, Danny Greene, Andrew Ellis Johnson, Matt Milligan, Haumed Rahmani, and Nowhere Mountain. 
Artist Statements & Bios

Chad Eby

Chad Eby is a Lexington Kentucky-based multidisciplinary artist, designer and educator working with light, sound, and code to engage with the grain of digital technologies. 

Eby creates work, by turns stark and whimsical, that explores humanity's fraught relationship with made objects using sound, light, and digital fabrication techniques. 
​
His research interests revolve around the peculiar relationship between digital and physical: especially the residue-loss, surplus and corruption-that results from moving back and forth between atoms and bits, map and territory, description and thing. 
Part of the faculty of University of Kentucky's School of Visual Art Studies since 2019, Chad previously served at the Herron School of Art and Design at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (the Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm, and Florida State University in Tallahassee. He was awarded the Frank C. Springer Family Faculty Innovation Award in 2017. 
Chad's work has been shown at the Tekniska Museet (the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology) in Stockholm, Sweden, Generative Art XXII in Rome, Italy, New Media Fest in Valencia, Spain, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, TAG at the University of Western Florida, the Columbia College Center for Book and Paper and various local venues across the United States. He has attended competitive residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Elsewhere, and was selected for the inaugural Space Art Summer School hosted at the Russian Museum of Cosmonautics. 

Artist Statement
Parallel to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and greatly facilitating that spread, a virulent strain of Bad Ideas also swept the globe. A surge of mis- and disinformation promulgated by a strange mix of opportunists, true believers, state actors and lulzers, and amplified by an army of COVID-19 sequestered thumb-clickers: fever dreams featuring bats, billionaires, 5G, tracking chips, and the soul-damaged vaccinated who, by succumbing to media-driven fear, lost their opportunity to "ascend." Disinformation Containment Unit D6 is an equally irrational alternative. Inspired by quack 5G and chemtrail protective devices, it is a fantastical electro-spiritual information appliance—ready for field deployment—imagined to detect and neutralize nearby disinformation. Driven by a WiFi-emitting ESP8266 chip and not-very-sophisticated cellular automata simulation, it's twin OLED displays give continuous animated feedback on its progress.

Danny Greene

Danny Greene (°1977, Honolulu ) makes paintings and paintings. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, his paintings references post-punk theory as well as the avant-garde or the degeneracy of the post-modern world. His paintings are often classified as part of the new romantic movement because of the desire for the local in the unfolding globalized technocracy. However, this reference is not intentional, as this kind of art is part of the collective memory. By referencing romanticism, grand-guignolesque black humour and symbolism, he creates work through labour-intensive processes which can be seen explicitly as a personal exorcism ritual. They are inspired by a nineteenth-century tradition of works, in which an ideal of ‘Fulfilled Absence’ was seen as the pinnacle. His works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By choosin mainly formal solutions, he tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations. His works are based on formal associations which open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered images arise in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned. Danny Greene currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. ​

Andrew Ellis Johnson

Andrew Ellis Johnson’s work has appeared in galleries, festivals, public collaborations, conferences, and publications in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has performed as co-founder of the collective PED in Buffalo, Belfast, Chongqing, Rio de Janeiro, St. John’s, and Toronto. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and Carnegie Mellon University (MFA) in Pittsburgh, where he is Associate Professor of Art. Residencies and exchanges over the last decade include those at: Korean National University of the Arts, Seoul; Blue Mountain Center, New York; University of the Arts London, Camberwell; Fayoum International Art Center, Egypt; Sites of Passage in Jerusalem/Ramallah/ Pittsburgh; and Tsinghua University in Beijing.
​
Recent two-person exhibits include RESORT at Kendall College of Art & Design and McDonough Museum of Art and GETTING THERE at Gettysburg College and this fall at Stockton University. His most recent solo show was FOUNDER at SUNY Cortland’s Dowd Gallery.

Artist Statement
This statement and the poem below were written in July 2020. Insurrection features a man in full PPE reading while reclining comfortably on his living room couch. A cat purrs in his lap. In the safe seclusion of his own home, he is over-protected. Others, however, are not. Not George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Brionna Taylor and too many other people who were shopping, running, sleeping—simply living, while black. Their deaths are painfully singular, but their cumulative toll constitutes a persistent pandemic of racism. Another pandemic rages as people rage in the streets. The death count from Covid-19 has now climbed over 100,000 in four months. Fallow Trench In the exceptional Nation State of One, the novel plague, first declared nonexistent, then decried as sophic, was ultimately decreed ‘Democratic’. It was. Though itself invisible to the naked eye, the virus, though little, spread by aspirational spittle, magnified divisions and bonds. Manufacturers mandated. Distributors consolidated. Liberators looted. Suppliers hoarded. Senators sanctioned. the unaffordable could be bought again. Sacrificial heroes, ill-suited, staved, for another quarter, the essential economy. Perhaps. Routines were screened. Meetings multiplied and merged. Unemployment ranks swelled. Curves flattened; feeds fed. Appropriations diverted. Tweet-enlisted fascists drilled. Unmasked. Indisposed Justice meted black breath no repose. The State of Stasis is fought within, and without.

Matt Milligan

Matt Milligan (b. 1973) is an artist based in New York City working in digital and film photography. His work explores identity and its connections with home and community. Originally from Dallas, Texas, he holds a degree in musicology from the University of North Texas. Having always been attracted to how music conveys meaning, he carries that theoretical approach into his photography. Milligan's work was recently included in Scopio's "Rethinking, Questioning Urban Realities through Photography in the Age of COVID-19," in Porto, Portugal.

Artist Statement
The Things We Must Face When news of the shutdowns started to make the rounds, I was in the office—three floors of what had become an eerie and quiet building occupied, at that time, by me and, occasionally, the cleaning guy. It had been that way for a week or so. Almost everyone who had the means was leaving or preparing to leave the city, and my office was no exception. The sudden exit of those who wanted to escape and could also afford to leave was the first visible division. And it was this class separation that would, at least for me, expose the rest of what was to come as a series of interlopers—unwanted visitors that keep showing up at the doorstep of America. This all reminded me of something James Baldwin said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” Despite what we frequently read in the media, there is nothing unprecedented about 2020. We are experiencing problems that have been with us for generations, problems that stem from divisions. And those divisions are rooted in money, politics, religion, race, and other things one should not talk about in polite company. But these social taboos are the very things we must talk about—and face—as Mr. Baldwin also famously said, or they will keep splitting us in two over and over again. A couple of weeks after the stay-at-home order went into effect, the half of us who remained in the city had to navigate a familiar but unknown landscape. My neighborhood was as empty and quiet as my office had been. When I went on walks or the occasional errand, I photographed the changes I saw. I also turned my camera inside (because we were inside all the time!); it was a natural response to the confinement. I began to see repeated images and symbols, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt. I realized that if I was sensitive to them, they could bolster the symbols of the past that Baldwin talked about and help me navigate what I was encountering and feeling. As Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, said, “the true symbol does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself.” Making these photographs was a cathartic experience for me. It brought to the surface my human “constant preoccupation with pleasure and pain... our pursuit of this happiness,” as fourteenth-century Japanese writer Yoshida Kenko said. It also—thankfully—brings Merton’s new awareness that, without his and Baldwin’s help, I would not have found. This process and these writers taught me that before I say anything about the problems I see out in the world, I must first look inside and face myself.

Haumed Rahmani

Straddling creative, scientific, and digital frameworks, Haumed Rahmani spends their time thinking of questions that lead to better questions. Their code is being used by the likes of Cornell University and the Max Planck Institute, and they’re slated to present at the International Liquid Crystal Conference in 2022. With work ranging from microscope imaging to generative weaving and projection art, Haumed is foremost a toolbuilder and communicator. They currently focus their art on using math, light & time as ingredients, and on building out their open-source design framework, the aeiyou glitchkit, which was used to create this piece (and can be found online.)
Follow more of their work on Instagram at @Haumed.

Artist Statement
This piece offers a space to reckon with our mortalities, the branching of time, and the ever-present hand of chance that mold our identities. After it all, what is truly ours?

The weaving appears grey at a distance, but up close the threads are revealed to be vibrantly colorful; and as one moves around the weaving, they catch not only a shifting moiré pattern, but also their own fractured reflection. The weave structure was created generatively using code and a microscope image of a liquid crystal. 
​
This is among my first set of weavings, as I reoriented my entire life during the pandemic, quitting school and seriously beginning my art practice. While the year delivered tremendous growth, I found many opportunities and even people slipping through my fingertips, forever lost to time and entropy. Death was brought to the forefront of my thoughts, and it questioned life itself. I found some peace through the clock-like act of weaving, which can be a meditation.

Nowhere Mountain

Nowhere Mountain is an art collaborative made up of St. Louis, Missouri based visual artist Mark Regester and Salt Lake City, Utah based composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, sound-artist and mad scientist Dave Madden.
​
Artist Statement
Nowhere Mountain is an imagined geographical landmark that lies between two specific points on a map.
It's where the magic happens.
Nowhere Mountain is pure, organic collaboration.
Nowhere Mountain is creation for creation's sake.

Cut From the Same Cloth

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART: CREATIVITY WORKS PROGRAM 
​October 16 - November 28, 2021

Cut From the Same Cloth features the mixed media works of Ewuresi Archer and Crystal Miller. 

The vibrant works in this series draw directly from the artists' African American and African cultures, offering a dialect and a conversation between the two experiences. 

"We come from two different backgrounds and are of the same race. There are a lot of differences and similarities between us as humans but also between our cultures. As a result, the work depicts our hopefulness and pride in our cultures. Rooted in cultural experiences, the hair salon, music, and home life, these experiences bring us together. While this may not be the lifestyle for every black person, we hope, in some way, a connection can be made.

The paintings depict physical spaces that we have been in and or are a place we call home. The textures, patterns, and gem-like motifs represent the continuous black lifestyle. The color combination is used to represent black skin but also celebrate black lives and transform these spaces and demonstrate an experience.

Overall the series invites the viewer to reflect on these spaces, and look into our lives, and appreciate our culture for what it is."

Crystal Miller

Crystal Miller is an interdisciplinary mixed media artist currently living and working in Cleveland, Ohio. She has an Associates in Graphic Design and is on her way to get a Bachelors in Fine Arts in Painting, Sculpture and Expanded Media at The Cleveland Institute of Art. Her paintings and sculptures explore the ideas and concepts of beauty through unconventional materials such as beads, yarn, rhinestones, and foam. Her main focus is to create an individualized aesthetic that represents her blackness and personal experiences with hair.

Ewuresi Archer

Ewuresi Archer is an artist currently living and working in Cleveland Ohio. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her paintings utilize fluorescent colors and distorted shapes to create unnatural environments. In using distorted shapes and colors, she creates spaces that have viewers questioning and wondering about the nature of reality, and how it is constantly slipping through our fingers.