occasional urges

occasional urges brings together works by Sophronia Cook, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Rindon Johnson, and David Reed, exploring how temporal presence is captured and expressed through gestures, bodily movements, and shifting states within the artworks. The interplay of transparency and presence, along with the layering of these elements, foregrounds processual approaches shaped by prior experiences, thoughts, and memories, where the mutability of states becomes a central theme. Dorota Gawęda (*1986 in Lubin, PL) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (*1987 in Kaunas, LT) investigate the movement of the body through space, creating sculptural fragments of memory where performance, image, and the senses overlap. The eight-part series of works Leave No Trace (Athens) (2022) consists of steel aluminum screens dressed in chiffon upon which ghostly photographs are printed. These images depict scenes from a past performance, presented in 2018 in Athens as part of ANTI - 8th Athens Biennale. In that performance, the artists created a science-fictionlike environment, exploring the intimacy of spaces through text, touch, scent, and overlapping layers of perception. In the sculptures the memories unfold through fragmentary images. Movement within the space serves as a connecting element between the previous performance and the current reception of these works. Depending on the viewer‘s angle, the images either reveal themselves or recede from sight, evoking a ghostly remembrance of the past moment. Their sculpture Censer 1 (2023) releases the scent of a past performance, synthetically recreated to olfactorily transmit memories of the collective event. David Reed (*1946 in San Diego, US) draws strong inspiration from the movement of film, transforming the expressive gesture of paint application into an artificially controlled depiction of the brushstroke, built up through layers of overlaying and sanding down paint. His largescale painting #659 (Vice & Reflection), (1975/ 1996-2000/ 2007-2011/ 2014-2015/ 2015-2016) references the TV series „Miami Vice“, exploring the interplay between time, movement, and perception by adopting the compositional strategies of film and translating them onto the canvas. Here, the artist tests the boundaries between painterly gesture and media aesthetics, influenced by the visual language of the 1980s. Neon-lit blues and yellows evoke the light and nocturnal atmosphere of Miami as brought to life in the iconic series. Reed’s use of translucent surfaces and intense colors conjures the cool, stylized ambiance typical of cinematic experience. His “brushstroke” elements seem to float out of the image, as if the painting is merging into the space of projection. Since the 1970s, Reed has created works that engage with both the act of painting itself and the perception of surface and depth. In the paintings that are continuously numbered, such as #335, #518 and #586, Reed often uses stencils that are cut by digital image processing and laser to accurately reproduce certain brush marks. This creates a tension between spontaneous and deliberately placed elements and makes the layering particularly apparent. Like Reed, Sophronia Cook (*1992 in Sanger, US) works in tugging from oblivion for a moment (2024) with a technique of repeated application and sanding of paint, turning the canvas into a multi-layered object in which numerous traces come together, reminiscent of past moments. In her works, Cook combines materials such as vinyl, silk, graphite, oil paint, silver leaf and sterling silver to create paintings that thematize surface and depth, both visually and in terms of content. The starting point is a silk base onto which she applies silicone to define shapes. By layering oil paint and graphite and then removing the silicone, a ghostly imprint remains, reflecting the fragmentary nature of memories. The moiré effect – a flowing, wave-like pattern created by the overlapping of structures – reinforces this impression and evokes the fleeting nature of remembering and forgetting, as clear forms repeatedly fade into blurs and distortions. Organized Science (2024) is a collaborative work by Rindon Johnson and Sophronia Cook, in which they cast the bone marrow of cattle in aluminum. This four-part sculpture transforms organic material into solid form, exploring the boundary between vitality, natural decay, and artificial preservation. The aluminum forms translate corporeality into sculptural fragments, opening a dialogue about the connection and separation between human and animal existence. In this collaboration, Sophronia Cook and Rindon Johnson merge their individual artistic approaches. While Johnson often emphasizes the natural transformation of his materials by exposing them to weather and time, Cook finds expression in material transformation as a means to explore form and texture. This collaboration fuses their artistic philosophies into a shared language: the aluminum casts of cattle bones become a work that makes the fragility and strength of both the living and the past tangible. In Organized Science, the ephemerality of the organic becomes a foundation for contemplating permanence, thus acting as a form of memory storage. Johnson‘s work Lyn Says #1 [...] (2023) is a wall object made of cowhide, which the artist treats with polyurethane, bleach, minerals and colored pencils and exposes to the weather, which also leaves traces in the skins. The work Attack in transition (moi!) [...] (2024), on the other hand, is made of fish leather, which the artist works with synthetic resin, paint and chalk and stretches over a wooden frame. For him, leather is a by-product and a relic of industrial processing chains, revealing a comprehensive historical and conceptual condition that illustrates the treatment of other living beings and can be applied to the colonialist legacy of Western states. Who and what can be counted as by-products? Johnson pursues this question in the work series, in which he addresses the subjugation, neglect and exchangeability of non-human actors in our contemporary times, while drawing parallels to identity politics and classist themes, as well as practices of racist exploitation. The exhibition thus presents works that dissolve linear narratives on multiple levels, making time experientially layered within the space.