Chioma Ebinama, Ines di Folco, Eden Seifu, Taylor Simmons, Sydney Vernon
Fit it for the sky
November 4 - December 9, 2023
Chioma Ebinama (b. 1988, Maryland, USA) lives and works in Athens, Greece. Ebinama is a Nigerian-American artist who is interested in how animism, mythology, and precolonial philosophies present a space to articulate a vision of freedom outside of Western social and political paradigms. Raised in the United States by Nigerian Christian immigrants, Ebinama is drawn to the aesthetic of formalized religion for its potential to celebrate inner life. As she seeks to create new mythologies for the African Diaspora, her work is influenced by a myriad of sources, from West African cosmology to folk art of the global South, to the visual language of Western religion and Eastern spiritual traditions. Recent solo exhibitions include mud & butterflies, Catinca Tabacaru, Bucharest (2021); Now I only believe in…love, Fortnight Institute in New York (2020), Leave the thorns and take the rose, The Breeder Gallery, Athens (2020) and Anunu: Notes on the Divine Feminine, Boys’ Quarters Project Space, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, (2019).
Inès di Folco (b. 1993, Paris, France) lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She is the winner of the Sitel Prize at Jeune Création and the Because of Many Suns Prize at the Art-O-Rama fair. Her work has been shown at the Anne de Villepoix gallery (Paris), at the agnès b. gallery. Hors les Murs (Paris), at la Corvée (Paris), at FRAC Lorraine (Metz), at Friche Belle-de-Mai (Marseille), at SISSI club (Marseille), at Victoria Miro (London), and with Drawing a Blank (London/Paris).The works of Inès Di Folco are like so many floating narratives nourished by a situated and recomposed heritage. They are built during a long process of documentation and investigation, inspired by literature, his travels and music. Like images, the paintings address themes of micro-history and archives, memory, cults and ritual practices around the world. Driven by exchanges and the transmission of knowledge, she regularly collaborates with others and includes those close to her in her work.
Eden Seifu (b. 1996, Boston, MA) works and lives in Seattle, Washington. She received a BA in Communication at the University of Washington, where she also studied Art History, in 2018. She has shown work at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle and has had paintings published in the University of Washington Bricolage Journal. Seifu has exhibited in recent group exhibitions at Cooper Cole, Toronto; Half Gallery, Los Angeles; The Valley, Taos; Qingdao Art Museum, China; Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto; and 8th House Projects, Mexico City. Her works are in public collections at the Frye Art Museum Seattle, WA and the Fairfield Museum in Fairfield, CT. Eden Seifu is a figurative painter whose work takes an interest in depictions of the fantastical and surreal as mediums for the viewer to become intimate with the psychology of oneself and of others. In featuring people of color, especially Black people, as her subjects, she wishes to combat the historically exclusive tradition to depict only a small percentage of people as receptors of the most poignant and riveting human emotions. Seifu’s inspirations include romance novels, Russian symbolist paintings, illuminated manuscripts, adventure anime, comic books, and more.
Taylor Simmons (b. 1990, Atlanta, GA, USA) lives and works in New York. His practice incorporates painting, printmaking and drawing to make predominantly figurative works. He studied printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA. Recent solo exhibitions include SIXI Museum, Nanjing, China (forthcoming); Everything All At Once, Public Gallery, London, UK (2022). Select group exhibitions include Stir Crazy, Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2023); Something Slight, Curated by Mueni Loko Rudd, Martha’s Contemporary, Austin, TX, (2022); Shelf Life, Marlborough Gallery, London, UK (2022); Friend Zone curated by Vaughn Spann at Half Gallery, New York, USA (2021), and Frieze New York with Half Gallery (2021). Simmons’ process stems from his archive of compulsively collated imagery, which merge and manifest in his canvases through loose lines, gestural marks, fluorescent washes and erasure –– scraping the paint away to reveal abstract details. By gathering and layering fragments of what is around him, his work creates a reflection of who he is and what he sees: a face, a pose, a moment, weaving them together as a means to question why they meant something in the first place.
Sydney Vernon (b. 1995, Prince George’s County, MD) lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Vernon earned her BFA at The Cooper Union, New York. Recent exhibitions include Syndey Vernon, Kapp Kapp, New York, NY (2023); Face Values, 125 Newbury, New York (2023); The Dance, Luce Gallery, Turin (2023); Maverick, Magician, Muse, curated by Sydney Vernon and Gardy St Fleur, Deli Gallery, New York (2022), and Death of Beauty, Sargent’s Daughter’s, Los Angeles (2022). Sydney Vernon superimposes personal family photographs and folklore with both real and imagined histories, quietly critiquing the global depiction of Black life and bodies. Combining elements of painting, drawing, and collage, Vernon’s multilayered works blend memory and history into new forms, at once imagining a poetic contextualization and a demand for recontextualization, coalescing symbols and ornaments with the spirit of her figures.
Inès di Folco (b. 1993, Paris, France) lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She is the winner of the Sitel Prize at Jeune Création and the Because of Many Suns Prize at the Art-O-Rama fair. Her work has been shown at the Anne de Villepoix gallery (Paris), at the agnès b. gallery. Hors les Murs (Paris), at la Corvée (Paris), at FRAC Lorraine (Metz), at Friche Belle-de-Mai (Marseille), at SISSI club (Marseille), at Victoria Miro (London), and with Drawing a Blank (London/Paris).The works of Inès Di Folco are like so many floating narratives nourished by a situated and recomposed heritage. They are built during a long process of documentation and investigation, inspired by literature, his travels and music. Like images, the paintings address themes of micro-history and archives, memory, cults and ritual practices around the world. Driven by exchanges and the transmission of knowledge, she regularly collaborates with others and includes those close to her in her work.
Eden Seifu (b. 1996, Boston, MA) works and lives in Seattle, Washington. She received a BA in Communication at the University of Washington, where she also studied Art History, in 2018. She has shown work at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle and has had paintings published in the University of Washington Bricolage Journal. Seifu has exhibited in recent group exhibitions at Cooper Cole, Toronto; Half Gallery, Los Angeles; The Valley, Taos; Qingdao Art Museum, China; Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto; and 8th House Projects, Mexico City. Her works are in public collections at the Frye Art Museum Seattle, WA and the Fairfield Museum in Fairfield, CT. Eden Seifu is a figurative painter whose work takes an interest in depictions of the fantastical and surreal as mediums for the viewer to become intimate with the psychology of oneself and of others. In featuring people of color, especially Black people, as her subjects, she wishes to combat the historically exclusive tradition to depict only a small percentage of people as receptors of the most poignant and riveting human emotions. Seifu’s inspirations include romance novels, Russian symbolist paintings, illuminated manuscripts, adventure anime, comic books, and more.
Taylor Simmons (b. 1990, Atlanta, GA, USA) lives and works in New York. His practice incorporates painting, printmaking and drawing to make predominantly figurative works. He studied printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, USA. Recent solo exhibitions include SIXI Museum, Nanjing, China (forthcoming); Everything All At Once, Public Gallery, London, UK (2022). Select group exhibitions include Stir Crazy, Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2023); Something Slight, Curated by Mueni Loko Rudd, Martha’s Contemporary, Austin, TX, (2022); Shelf Life, Marlborough Gallery, London, UK (2022); Friend Zone curated by Vaughn Spann at Half Gallery, New York, USA (2021), and Frieze New York with Half Gallery (2021). Simmons’ process stems from his archive of compulsively collated imagery, which merge and manifest in his canvases through loose lines, gestural marks, fluorescent washes and erasure –– scraping the paint away to reveal abstract details. By gathering and layering fragments of what is around him, his work creates a reflection of who he is and what he sees: a face, a pose, a moment, weaving them together as a means to question why they meant something in the first place.
Sydney Vernon (b. 1995, Prince George’s County, MD) lives and works in Baltimore, MD. Vernon earned her BFA at The Cooper Union, New York. Recent exhibitions include Syndey Vernon, Kapp Kapp, New York, NY (2023); Face Values, 125 Newbury, New York (2023); The Dance, Luce Gallery, Turin (2023); Maverick, Magician, Muse, curated by Sydney Vernon and Gardy St Fleur, Deli Gallery, New York (2022), and Death of Beauty, Sargent’s Daughter’s, Los Angeles (2022). Sydney Vernon superimposes personal family photographs and folklore with both real and imagined histories, quietly critiquing the global depiction of Black life and bodies. Combining elements of painting, drawing, and collage, Vernon’s multilayered works blend memory and history into new forms, at once imagining a poetic contextualization and a demand for recontextualization, coalescing symbols and ornaments with the spirit of her figures.