Bau Haus Semi-Annual VI: Hello, World!

Bau Haus in collaboration with Codify Art is pleased to present Hello, World!, featuring work by Jarrett Key, Jon Key, Sharina Gordon, Son Kit, and Wael Morcos. This exhibition will be on view for one night only during the opening reception: Saturday, November 11, 7–10PM.

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Hello, World!

@Bau Haus, 516 Bainbridge St. #1L Brooklyn, NY

November 11, 2017

When learning a new programming language, tradition dictates that one begins by writing a “Hello, World!” program. It is a simple script, used to illustrate the basic syntax of the language, and the successful output of “Hello, World!” by the computer marks the first instance of communication between human and machine. 

For writers, artists, or anybody disposed to imagination, world-building contains a similar moment of first contact: one constructs an entrance into a visionary space, and the space offers itself up for introduction. Determining the rules of the world thereafter feels less like an exercise in creation and more an exploratory relationship, in which the roles of architect and adventurer are conflated or confused.

Does one create a world by imagining it? Or does the world precede the imagination, which only allows access to it? In either case, how does one measure agency? 

This question dogs the steps of speculative fiction, so often the venue for playing out scenarios we cannot will into our existence. Is it a concession, a capitulation, to have to escape elsewhere than one’s actual life, one’s physical life, the systems one is born into? Is it, instead, an act of power, where one manifests the world one sees for the rest us to reckon with?

Rather than offering direct answers, the work in Hello, World! is the promised introduction into worlds that engage the questions. In landscapes, soundscapes, artifacts, and ecosystems, Hello, World! examines the ways in which we interpret, navigate, exert control over or are destroyed by the lives we imagine for ourselves.

ABOUT BAU HAUS

BAU HAUS is a live/work project and process space located in Bed-Stuy. Alternately called a studio, an exhibition venue, halfway house, community lab, conceptual incubator, and a great party, Bau Haus is committed to works-in-progress and proofs of concept in the spirit of experimentation, self-exploration, and accessibility. The Bau Haus Semi-Annual Show happens twice a year and features work that has never been shown anywhere else; it is less a culmination of the artists’ work thus far and more an invitation into dialogue regarding works to come. Bau Haus is inhabited and run by Jarrett Key and Son Kit.

The “Bau” in “Bau Haus” is a derivative of “boo” and akin to “darling,” not to be confused with the German school, “Bauhaus.”

 

THRESHELD: final days!

THRESHELD is up for only two more weekends at Underdonk! We at Codify Art were so pleased to be able to curate this group show of wonderful Q/T/W/OC artists. The response thus far has been amazing—whether to the meditative calm of Janaye Brown's video Bather, After Dinner, or the cheeky sensation of the foot massagers in Orlando Estrada's Varied Pleasures, or the surprising greeting of Inhye Lee's motion-sensitive Smile Trio: Who thought of this little song, to name a few. Come by to see the work Sat/Sun until September 10 from 1–6PM, or catch us at our closing event, Friday, September 8, from 7–9PM!

STANDARD STANDARD at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2017

Codify Art is thrilled to present STANDARD STANDARD, a new exhibition of work by QTPOC artists at SPRING/BREAK Art Show to coincide with Armory Arts Week in New York City. The sixth edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show will take place in the former corporate offices located at 4 Times Square, with our curatorial project in room #24 on the 23rd floor of the building. The show will run March 1–6, 2017, from 11AM to 6PM daily, with a VIP Vernissage on Tuesday, February 28 from 5–9PM. Passes can be purchased at springbreakartshow.com.

"Man in the Violet Suit No. 3 (Red)" by Jon Key

"Man in the Violet Suit No. 3 (Red)" by Jon Key

Between December 2012 and May 2013, Time magazine went from declaring “selfie” one of the Top 10 Buzzwords of the year to lambasting “The Me Me Me Generation” on their front cover. Since then, the battlefield designated by these two poles has been tread flat with skirmishes. Selfie apologists weaponize the language of empowerment and entrepreneurship while detractors raise concerns over inauthenticity and surveillance. What seems to be the crux of both arguments is power: are we are setting the terms for our presentations, or are we simply arming a malicious ether with our likenesses?

The black mirror, or Claude glass, is similarly a tool of power. In its facade, all of nature is distilled and composed for the artist’s gaze. However, consider: who held these mirrors? In the 18th and 19th centuries, who could walk freely through a picturesque landscape? Who had the time and means to decide to paint it? Who was allowed the distance necessary to observe? Now, as we speak of a generation enraptured by our reflections, can we say the glass has passed hands?

As cultural conversations turn to the proliferation of self, the question of whether art should ‘hide the artist’ should not be removed from the question of power. Some artists simply cannot hide. For so long as the black mirror is held by the institution, the marginalized artist remains the subject on view. In the glass, her reflection is diffused—not the sharp specificity of the individual but the simplification of a (skin) tonal range. As Hannah Black writes, “the identity artist has to exemplify a race/gender category, but as soon as she steps into the institution’s embrace, she becomes an example of universality.” What does it mean that entire artistic designations are delineated by the artists’ categorical identities rather than the content, the medium, the form of the works? 

The artist of color (and all its intersections), is familiar with this conflation. There is never an individual; it is always “all of us.” If the artist hides, it is less her decision and more an erasure, a disavowal. For a subject on view, all of choice swings on the fulcrum of identity, and there is no escape from the omnipresent eye.

Martine Gutierrez: “Hands Up”

Interested in the fluidity of relationships and the role of genders within them, Martine Gutierrez offers mannequins in her own stead to explore the diverse narratives of intimacy. Life-size props blur into a discourse about what it means to be ‘genuine,’ where interpretations of dichotomous constructs such as ‘gay’ vs ‘straight,’ or ‘reality’ vs ‘fantasy’ are revealed as subjective and mutable. Acting as a conduit, Martine supplies a framework that facilitates a dialogue requiring the viewer to question their own perceptions of sex, gender, and social groups.

Jarrett Key: “Hair Painting No. 11” and “Hair Painting No. 14” 

Jarrett Key’s Hair Paintings are as personal as they are political, and political because they are personal. Scored with an oral history of Jarrett’s late grandmother, these choreographed performances recount their family’s specific rituals through the use of their black hair—an intensely charged symbol of respectability politics, workplace discrimination, and beauty standards—as the mark-making tool. Though the resulting paintings can exist within a European abstract art historical context, Jarrett’s black body on view carries the weight of their difference, serving to ingratiate or alienate the audience in turn with their history, personhood, pathos, and joy.

Jon Key: “Man in the Violet Suit No. 2(Green)” and “Man in the Violet Suit No. 3 (Red)”

As abstractions of the Queer Black Man, a category whose members already walk society as caricatures, Jon Key's “Man in the Violet Suit” series plays on the assumption of self-portraiture. The subject of the paintings is simultaneously flamboyant and flattened, provocative and subdued. The frame stifles, but the eyes accuse elsewhere. The collaged elements are also painted, claiming the verisimilitude of photography in role but embodying the ambiguity of pictorialization in form; the Man, who may or may not be the artist, explores how distance from perception cannot fully negate the gradation between the viewer and the self. 

Yves-Olivier Mandereau: “Porncelain”

Yves-Olivier Mandereau’s “Porncelain” reappropriates fine china as a means of confrontation between ‘The Christian Home’ and his homosexuality, staged on the most hallowed locus of the family hearth—the dinner table. Yves-Olivier subverts the heirloom, a beacon of traditional values, with gay pornography, a personal utopia in which he had found himself unafraid. “Porncelain” is both cheeky and traumatic, a preemptive strike at ‘The Conversation’ that also raises questions of a legacy for the queer community, which stands as the only classified social grouping without any generational inheritance of material culture.

Emily Oliveira: "Labor-In-Vain"

With “Labor-In-Vain,” Emily Oliveira draws a thread between the domestic labor of women’s crafts, the invisible and outsourced labor of black and brown women textile workers, and the physical labor of women body builders. Their utility interrupted by the assemblage materials, the embroidered pillows reject the notion of the handmade as a relic of the past and instead place themselves in the visceral present of global labor, economic disparity, and food security. “Labor-in-Vain” examines the ways in which feminized labor is marginalized—both when it aligns with the desires of men and market, and when it directly subverts those desires.

The artists in STANDARD STANDARD are not monolith but acknowledge the possibility of being viewed as such. Their work confronts, accepts, or simply exists in their responsibility as it relates to their truths. They fly their own standards, aware to which they will be held.

For more information, please visit springbreakartshow.com or contact kat.jk.lee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Bau Hau Semi-Annual IV: You Are Here

Bau Haus in collaboration with Codify Art is pleased to present You Are Here, featuring work by Jarrett Key, Jon Key, Kat JK Lee, and Kameron Neal. This exhibition is on view for one night only during the opening reception: Saturday, October 22, 2016, 7-10PM.

Cotton and Magnolia Leaves by Jon Key

Cotton and Magnolia Leaves by Jon Key

YOU ARE HERE

@Bau Haus, 516 Bainbridge St. #1L Brooklyn

October 22, 2016

Found on subway maps to mall directories, the words “You Are Here” serve to situate the inquirer in larger spatial contexts. The subway map or the mall directory, through its confident declaration, lays claim to a specific cross-section of “here,” the viewer’s physical body in relation to the bounds of an illustrated territory. Leaving the subway or the mall does not negate your Being Here; Here is moved, or Here moves with You.

In three immersive and participatory environments, YOU ARE HERE invites viewers to situate themselves anew through the transformation of the most quotidian of spaces: the apartment room. The assemblages herein comprise a study in what it means to be present, to have come through the past to reach this point in time. The artists in this exhibition seek to create common contexts in which conversations can occur, each an intensely personal GPS marker that remains beholden to greater communities within racialized society. When You, informed by DNA sequences and collective storytelling from previous generations, navigate a Here built atop structures erected before before your birth, what map traces those collusions? What do you bring in and what do you leave out? What of those divots, protrusions, scars? To reach back for ancestry and find that extant records remember grandmother’s warmth but begin with the Middle Passage; to embody the Bear-Mother of Korea’s mythical founder in the throes of her transmogrification; to traverse a childhood in the plantation south, an adulthood under the police state, and wonder if your home is yet where YOU are home? Opening the doors into these formative intimacies, traumas, and lived realities, YOU ARE HERE is both trespasser and guest in a directory of intra-, inter-, and transgenerational experience. 

[dot]COM: A Codify Open Mic Night

[dot]COM, or [dot]Codify Open Mic, welcomes members of our community to share their talents at 440 Studios in the East Village! The first half of the night will be scheduled programming featuring dance, music, and poetry, after which we'll open it up to interested performers. 

Get excited for this very excellent lineup, and click through the links for a what-to-expect on May 31 in the room where it happens:

Whitney C. White — Music (Indie)

Odera Igbokwe — Dance

MJ Batson — Music (Indie)

Jeffrey Velez — Music (Jazz)

Jess X. Chen — Spoken Word

Marcus Bedinger — Music

Yaya McKoy — Spoken Word

Paco Salas Pérez — Poetry Reading

When and Where
May 31, 2016, 7-9PM
440 Studios
440 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003
$10 Suggested Donation

See you there!
 

Bau Haus Semi-Annual III: SOURCE MATERIALS

Codify Art presents SOURCE MATERIALS, a show of new work by five artists, at Bau Haus, a Brooklyn-based live/work studio, community art space, and Codify partner. This show marks Bau Haus' first anniversary! Come celebrate with us at our opening and afterparty.

SOURCE MATERIALS

@Bau Haus

Artists: Jarrett Key, Jonathan Key, Kat JK Lee, Kameron Neal, Hannah Lutz Winkler
Presented by Codify Art

April 30, 2016

The idea of the artist as solitary genius, working alone in their studio under the frenzy of sublime inspiration, has [mostly] been dethroned by the realities of contemporary practice. Removed from such a pedestal, artists have utilized a wealth of materials beyond those traditionally purposed for art-making—found objects, archival documents, other artworks—to create in a manner reflective of society’s holistic experience of the world. But this development introduces a complication. When the components comprising an artwork bring with them pre-existing utilities, purposes, and histories, does the artwork subsume them? Transcend them? Celebrate or fail them? Where are the edges of a composition? 

Through various mediums and from diverse directions, the five artists featured in SOURCE MATERIALS engage these questions and explore the potential for an ambiguity that enriches, rather than confuses, a finalized piece.

Jarrett Key’s paintings explicitly insert themselves into a specifically black (art) historical dialogue. With references ranging from Glenn Ligon to primary source diagrams of slave ships, Jarrett’s work does not pretend at an end in itself or an existence within a vacuum. Instead, it acts as a conduit, actively engaging in an existing conversation and leaving the door open for continuation.

Collage is an art form with an inherent tension, simultaneously a single piece and many pieces together. Jonathan Key utilizes this form to connect highly personal narratives to the nameless faces in civil rights photography. In this juxtaposition of vivid memory and the forgotten, a contemporary tableau revives that which was relegated to the archives, a second life that extends the half-life of both sides beyond their expected spans.

Drawing from such existing Internet phenomena as K-pop boy bands, fanfiction, and “mukbang” Youtube videos, Kat JK Lee creates their own canon of Korean-American Speculative Fiction in a process that directly confronts the accusations of derivativeness in South Korea’s fledgling sci-fi literary scene. This “creation-by-inference” method parallels Kat’s patchwork navigation of their racial and ethnic identity, where in every state, they find themselves as, at least partially, alien.

Kameron Neal shoots his own footage, but his videos denature completely the expected product of these filmings. Glitchy and often tongue-in-cheek, Kameron’s pieces highlight the frame as the primary unit of measure and splice the original shots in such a way as to antagonize his own material.

In Hannah Lutz Winkler’s paintings, art canvas and recycled fabrics occupy the same space in seeming disregard of their constructed differences. However, the intent is not to “elevate” the found scraps and old T-shirts. Rather, the presence of these fabrics recalls the physical intimacy and attachment humans have to textures/textiles and asks for a second look, a reconsideration, of the painting itself and painting as a form.

SOURCE MATERIALS endeavors to expand the edges of “composition” with work that showcases the histories of its components as much as the final art object; it seeks an engagement that arises from entering a dialogue as a player instead of a judge.

 

 

2015 YEAR IN REVIEW + BLOG LAUNCH

Happy 2016 from Codify Art (and happy belated MLK day, at this point)! In the spirit of #NewYearNewMe, we're rolling out our #NewBlog with some highlights from our past year. After all, you can't have the "new" without the "old."

YELLOW PERIL BLACK POWER

YELLOW PERIL BLACK POWER was a series of firsts—the first visual art show produced by Codify, the first public viewing of Bau Haus (a live/work studio cum community arts venue comprised of/run by Codify members Jarrett Key and Kat JK Lee), and the first presentation of Jarrett Key's "I AM AIN'T I" painting series.

As the title may suggest, YELLOW PERIL BLACK POWER was an unapologetic reclamation of racial identity, colored by the ways Jarrett and Kat, by virtue of their existence as black and Asian artists [people], threaten and are threatened by their frictive relationship to White America.

 

ABOUT FACE

About Face was Codify's second art show with Bau Haus, this time with the inclusion of team member Jonathan Key. In addition to featuring new work by the Bau Haus cohort, About Face showcased Jonathan's 12, a series of 12 collages created over 12 days.

The theme of About Face was two-fold, the first literally being "about face," as many of the pieces were portraits. However, the personal history and narratives explored in the work spoke to "about face" as in "turn around," or even as in "losing face"—a look back at the forces that shaped us and a 360-degree exploration of the visages encountered through multiple layers of performance.

 

WE ARE BULLET PROOF

We Are Bullet Proof is a manifesto as much as a project, offering a narrative of strength amidst the struggle and vulnerability of the Black Lives Matter movement. Jonathan Key headed this initiative in collaboration with Codify to create a series of posters and hoodies. In them is a message of empowerment and solidarity, and with all proceeds going to support Black Lives Matter organizations, We Are Bullet Proof is a call to action couched in a long history of protest design. For more information, read Jon's feature on ADC Global and visit the WE ARE BULLET PROOF website.

CODIFY+

In addition to our work as a collective, we want to highlight some individual projects undertaken by our team in 2015 as part of our mission to foreground work by creators of color.

JONATHAN KEY

Jonathan Key's Personal Narrative and Heritage Portraits books were included in Yale University's Odds and Ends Art Book Fair. Of Personal Narrative, Jon says, "I want to investigate the ways people and myself carry the remnants of our pasts, cultures, and identity and how these ideas perpetuate through the way we talk, move, and think about ourselves." Heritage Portraits is a collection of individual and unique stories about the influence of family, home, race, and orientation, and an investigation of how we perform these aspects of identity in our daily lives.

Day 10: Our 3 day #graphicdesign #workshop is over!! Look at my students!!!! #seniors #thesis #Lebanon #american #university #LAU #Lebanon #Byblos #typetalks #blackinbeirut #teacher #design #designstudents with @waelmorcos

"Day 10: Our 3 day #graphicdesign #workshop is over!! Look at my students!!!! #seniors #thesis #Lebanon #american #university #LAU #Lebanon #Byblos..."

Jon was also invited to teach at two different workshops with graphic designer Wael Morcos. The first was a Type Workshop at the Children's Museum of the Arts during its annual Spring Benefit: a fun-filled day of collaborative art-making between children and art professionals. The children—aged three to nine—were asked to interpret the work of Henri Matisse and Franz Kline using paint or letter cutouts. The results were then collected and digitized into two working typefaces: one for Matisse and another for Kline. These fonts were then gifted to the museum for use by participating children and CMA's marketing materials.

Jon and Wael then traveled to Beirut to hold a 3 day Graphic Design Workshop at the Lebanese American University. Working with LAU's Graphic Design Senior Class, the two helped students develop the visual storytelling for their thesis design projects. Topics ranged from the Syrian Refugee crisis to identities focusing on wellness and spirituality.

LEANDRO ZANETI

Leandro Zaneti worked as a producer for The Broken Record, a play written by Jonathan Louis Dent and directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian for the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. Set in present day New York City, The Broken Record grapples with the relationship between police and young black men, and as a well-reviewed piece, offers a point-of-entry into conversations around police brutality.

Leandro also returned to produce for Studio 42's Unproducible Smackdown for the second time. For the Smackdown, the authors are given a list of "ingredients" to work into each script, and after 1-2 rehearsals, all plays go up in a night of boozy fun where a winner is crowned! Leandro's piece was titled STAR TRIPS! by Adam Szymkowicz and directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh.

CHANTEL WHITTLE

FIND YOUR BAE CABARET was a night of love songs produced by Chantel Whittle in the intimate space above La Luz in Brooklyn. In Chantel's own words, the goal "was to explore the joys and complications of love, particularly infidelity, all while singing some of my favorite love songs." Chantel performed as lead female vocalist alongside Ben Freeman (male vocalist + pianist), Annie Kocher (supportive vocalist), Danielle Deluty (bassist), Daniel Friedman (guitarist), and Natan Last (drummer).

JARRETT KEY

Beyond the two Codify-produced Bau Haus shows, Jarrett Key has presented his "I AM AIN'T I" series at the Artists Against Police Violence show at the EMW Bookstore in Cambridge, MA and at MATTERING: An Arts Forum at NYU. Artists Against Police Violence was the first exhibition put up by the organization of the same name; it was curated through a national open call for artists to rise up against anti-Black police violence, in urgent response to the numerous protests erupting in Ferguson and across America. MATTERING was presented by the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue (IACD) and their Founding Director Anna Deavere Smith. The two-day forum explored what effect the Black Lives matter and All Lives matter movements had on artistic imaginations and highlighted developing works that considered race relations in America.

Jarrett also performed in two plays: Delilah (What is Love? Baby Don't Hurt Me), presented as part of the 2015 HOT! Festival at Dixon Place, and FOXTROT FOXTROT WHISKEY, a new algorithmic performance at CPR-Center for Performance Research.

KAT JK LEE

Kat JK Lee was featured in November's issue of Playbill as part of an interview with Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. Earlier in the year, Kat had donated portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, as portrayed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Leslie Odom, Jr., to the Public Theater to present to the actors as closing night gifts before Hamilton's move to Broadway. Their illustration is now hanging in Odom, Jr.'s Broadway dressing room.