As we hit the midway mark for the summer, the art world is at a low hum with a lot of the creative community still taking the month off before Armory Week whips us all back into our usual frenzy. But in the middle of this traditional lull, Kates-Ferri Projects is still making some noise with an eye-catching window front exhibition by Damien Davis.
Call us new to the scene and easy to please, but we found the act of staging a window exhibition while summering out of town to be quite a thoughtful and even ingenious gesture. While most galleries usually shutter its doors (and windows), Kates-Ferri is sleeping with one eye open–looking out of those of us who could use a little art in this sweltering heat. Damien Davis’ In The Cut is guaranteed to make you break and is great usage of what most of us would easily consider prime real estate.
We are hoping other galleries follow Kates-Ferri’s lead and leave something pretty for the little people to look at next summer.
The exhibition is a well curated snippet of Davis’ new body of works. In The Cut draws from the barbershop as both a social space and a system of visual logic. Across a series of laser-cut acrylic compositions held together with stainless steel hardware, silhouettes of heads, tools, and gestures are broken apart, repeated, and reorganized. The cut, the part, and the lineup are treated not only as aesthetic outcomes but as procedures, ways of measuring, ordering, and maintaining the body. In this framework, grooming becomes a form of structure, where identity is continuously shaped through small, deliberate adjustments.
In The Cut is a 24/7 exhibition and you can find it on display Kates-Ferri Projects (561 Grand Street) until August 30th.
Akeem is our founder. A writer, poet, curator and profuse sweater, he is responsible for the curatorial direction and overall voice of Quiet Lunch. The Bronx native has read at venues such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, KGB Bar, Lovecraft and SHAG–with works published in Palabra Luminosas and LiVE MAG13. He has also curated solo and group exhibitions at numerous galleries in Chelsea, Harlem, Bushwick and Lower Manhattan.