DOUBLE TAKE
Oasa DuVerney
Meredith James
Dana Lok
Reception: Saturday, May 13,4-6pm
May 13 - June 2, 2017
Curated by Guy Ben-Ari & Leah Wolff
Meta Meta Meta LLC is pleased to present Double Take, the inaugural exhibition to be held at AGENCY, featuring works by Oasa DuVerney, Meredith James and Dana Lok, curated by Guy Ben-Ari and Leah Wolff. The exhibition examines the mode of the double, through gestures of duplication, reversal, identification and projection. The title of the exhibition refers to the delayed interpretation and response to what has been seen, exemplifying the difference between looking and seeing.
From a series titled The View From Nowhere, a pair of portraits (Julian Assange and Diamond Reynolds) hang in the gallery by artist Oasa DuVerney. While Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, Diamond Reynolds livestreamed the immediate aftermath of the shooting and death of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, after he was shot by local police during a routine traffic stop. While their personas feature prominently within the dissemination narrative of this information, their faces remain absent within the content itself, existing instead solely within the metadata. Both subjects publish content that reveal social and political oppression, but by showing the portraits as a pair, DuVerney highlights the difference between the two.
In the drawing based on Jan van Eyck’s painting The Arnolfini Portrait titled The Actress Makes a Promise, Dana Lok shows the focal point of the piece, the couple’s hands. In the hand of the bride, the artist places an optical illusion, inviting the viewer to consider two different forms of imaginary space beyond the frame. One is the complete painting to which the image alludes, while the other is the impossible space as represented by the optical illusion.
Panorama Meredith, a full-body costume by Meredith James was part of an installation at the Queens Museum titled Möbius City. In a photo of the installation, the wearer is shown within a model version of James’ apartment, which at first glance appears to be a miniature. The image presents the viewer with an incompatible truth about the scale of the wearer, eliciting a delayed reaction, and compelling the viewer to re-examine the object that is in front of them.
For more info: www.metametameta.org/agency