Slump

co-curated by Lindsey Cummins & Ellie Bruner

“You lie down with snakes, you get up with the urge to bite back.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

The works of artists and friends, Nick Netherton, Nina Kersey, and Scott T. Anderson are a collective meditation on joy and suffering, play and grief. The artists grapple with these highs and lows by creating amidst, and despite, an existential sense of decline and despair. Raw, frenetic brushstrokes create dark corners, slump canvas over frame, and produce sidelong glances by menacing cowboys. Anderson’s landscapes and their hovering wranglers appear formidable. His cowboys snarl, recess, and bear down beneath wide-brimmed hats that unmistakably mark Western origins. Working through enduring icons of contemporary American life, Anderson plots out the difficult terrain and opponents that leave it in shadow. Within these cast shadows, Kersey and Netherton create unpolished material gestures that reflect on suppressed and unrealized forms of existence. Sometimes getting up and biting back and sometimes lying down, both Kersey and Netherton attempt to reconcile collective and internal forces that work to shape perceptions of self. Reveling in the desire to peer down into darkness, to lean and to break, “Slump” is an ode to the chaos, hope, and catharsis of total collapse.