Installation view of In A Free State at Luhring Augustine Tribeca, New York, NY
In the past few years, I’ve been looking to other artists for examples of how to contend in the studio with the active political collapse and complicity that we are living through. How can we make work that doesn’t keep its head down, but picks it up and yells —while avoiding the vanity of churning the image mill, or just pacifying collective guilt? The group show In a Free State at Luhring Augustine, curated by painters Salman Toor and Doron Langberg, is ripe ground for response to this question.
A couple of points make this show feel electric, a road map for possibility in the face of daily horror, grief, absurdity. First: some key pieces are overt, naming the oppressions they tackle outright. This naming feels so good, in part because it is uncommon in gallery spaces. It also creates an atmosphere in which more abstract works in the show gain context through osmosis. Then, there’s a shared call between works to find mental freedom in aesthetic sensuality as an enactment of the id: to follow your hands, your body through material and place and to let what you make reflect what it will.
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