A shell is a little thing, but I can make it look bigger by replacing it where I found it, on the vast expanse of sand. For if I take a handful of sand and observe what little remains in my hand after most of it has run out between my fingers, if I observe a few grains, then each grain individually, at that moment none of the grains seems small to me any longer, and soon the shell itself —this oyster shell or limpet or razor clam will appear to be an enormous monument, both colossal and intricate, like the temples of Angkor, or the church of Saint-Maclou, or the Pyramids, and with a meaning far stranger than these unquestioned works of man. – Francis Ponge, “Notes Toward A Shell,” The Voice of Things, p. 58-59
Tara Downs Gallery is pleased to present Notes Toward a Shell, a group exhibition surveying a broad range of emerging practices, bringing to the fore an ecological impulse latent in artistic production today. The exhibition draws its title from a section of Francis Ponge’s influential prose poetry collection The Voice of Things, originally published in 1942, an assiduous examination of quotidian objects – the pebble, the oyster, the orange, the cigarette. For Ponge, meditating on the interior life of “mute objects,” and situating them within his own comprehensive “cosmogony,” became a way to give voice to the overlooked things surrounding him, to study the world from many angles, all at once, in clear, often humorous, prose. The writer was also known for deploying the objeu, a portmanteau of object and game, which for him meant the deliberate selection of language and subject matter for its multivalence. With the duality of the phrase Notes Toward a Shell in mind, we might say that certain works on view attempt to articulate the essence of a given object, while others find resonance in natural processes such as accumulation, formation and cross-pollination, indeed, all processes of becoming.
Kiki Xuebing Wang’s paintings on view – Cove II and Lock, both 2023 – may be said to pursue both suggestions simultaneously. Wang’s works in oil on dyed cotton translate the sculptural forms of things – butterfly wings, garments, even shells – flatly to the two-dimensional space of the canvas, before the artist begins layering, accumulating ultra-thin layers of paint to obtain the luxuriant, undulating hues, the wash-like surfaces characteristic of her work. Tsai Yun-Ju’s 遊園 Garden Tour 1, 2024, oscillates between abstraction and representation, between mark-making and image production, between finely-wrought deliberation and haptic exertion, between micro- and macrocosm, in some sense making her accumulation of small painterly gestures itself a subject of the work. Elsewhere, a new suite of works by Ragna Bley expands the artist’s own cosmogony, deepening Bley’s ongoing study and transmutation of natural phenomena, while broadening her work’s enduring address to histories of abstraction and action painting.
Yet even as these practices locate analogues between natural occurrences and ways of working, others turn to different facets of ecology, such as how humans are formed and influenced by their surroundings, and how those interactions resonate through their cultural mediation. For instance, Covey Gong’s delicately constructed sculpture, Dream of the Red Chamber, 2023, imagines garments without bodies, and processes of garment-making liberated from their intended purpose of bodily adornment. By externalizing and estranging these processes, Gong draws fashion closer to architecture, generating a productive distance from objects generally understood as extensions of the body. And within the context of an exhibition largely concerned with natural splendors and the rich possibilities of organic forms, Preslav Kostov’s imposing paintings sound a dissenting note. The many tangled figures of these imposing paintings jostle against one another, groping and clutching, and stay suspended in action, as in history painting, but remain untethered from any specific narrative, any grounding element that may lend itself to easy interpretation. These works gracefully conjure forms of alienation engendered by placelessness, a condition other works in the exhibition often seek to resolve or transcend. While the human figure also factors into the work of Pei Wang, these paintings concern themselves with translating and adapting an idiosyncratic inventory of cultural material, from obscure film stills to more recognizable works of twentieth-century photography. Against the gleefully oppositional sense of appropriation that has marked the last half-century of artistic production, Pei works in a more subtle register, accurately recognizing culture as a far broader process of accumulation and cross-pollination, a position informed by the artist’s study of cultural objects across the Mediterranean.
Throughout The Voice of Things, Ponge makes little distinction between such man-made objects and those occurring in nature; both provide rich sites of articulation, and sit alongside one another in the text. Julien Monnerie’s recent wall-mounted sculptures in pewter go further, reveling in the conflation of such categories. They are at once humorous and elegantly constructed, initially appearing to resemble implacable biomorphic forms, somewhat suggestive of Constantin Brâncuși’s pared down sculptures from the early twentieth-century. But then, with parts of repurposed Bialetti percolators forming the hinge, the works open to reveal food molds cast in the form of oysters, clams, and stalks of asparagus – dispatches from a vanished culinary world, classically French, of pates and gelatin terrines. The sense of concealment produced by Pearl Oyster, the obfuscation of its interior, and by extension its interiority, in particular, speaks to the demands sensitively placed on the viewer throughout the exhibition. In the presence of its reflective surface, the shell presents itself as a warm invitation to reconsider the world around us, to rethink how we experience pleasure in relation to everyday objects, to give language to things left unsaid. In its own muteness, the meaning it withholds, the shell provides us with a rare opportunity to generate our own interpretations or, in other words, to speak on its behalf.
Ragna Bley (b. 1986, Uppsala, SE) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Solo exhibitions include: “Viridian Land,” Pilar Corrias, London, UK (2022); “Stranger’s Eye,” Kunstnernes Hus, Also, NO (2022); “Pluto,” OSL Contemporary, Oslo, NO (2020); “Lay Open,” Frankfurt Am Main,” Berlin , DE (2018). Ragna Bley’s works have been presented in group exhibitions including: “Notes Toward a Shell,” Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “The Inner Island,” Foundation Carmignac, Porquerolles, FR (2023); “The Infinite Conversation,” Beijing Biennial, Beijing (2022); “The Hour of Reckoning,” Henie Onstad Art Center, Hovikodden, NO (2021); “Wiggle Wiggle,” Corridor Project Space, Amsterdam, NE (2019); The Oslo Museum of Contemporary Art, Kunsthall Oslo, Oslo, NO (2017). The artist completed her BFA at The National Academy of Art (Oslo, NO) in 2011,b and received her MA from Royal College of Art (London, UK) in 2015. Her works are included in significant private and public collections including: The George Economic Collections, Athens, GR; Henie Onstage Kunstsenter, Hovikodden, NO; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, NO; The Modern Museum, Stockholm, SE; Roberts Institute of Art, London, UK; The Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; Malmö Konstmueum, Malmö, SE.
Covey Gong (b. 1994, Hunan, CN) lives and works in New York, United States. Solo exhibitions include: “Intercontinental,” Derosia, New York, US (2023); “Two person exhibition with Eli Ping,” Lubov, New York, US (2022); And Now Gallery, New York, US (2019); “Mayfly,” Bodega, New York, US (2019); “Cherry,” Salt Projects, Beijing, CN (2018). Covey Gong’s works have been presented in group exhibitions including: "Notes Toward a Shell," Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “Leaking Heaven, Laurel Gitlen, New York, US (2023); “Under the Volcano II,” Lomex, New York, US (2022); “When the World Becomes Flesh,” Baader Meinhof, Omaha, US (2022); “This is My Bodys,” Bodega (Derosia), New York, US (2021); “An Artist’s Age Mess,” Bodega (Derosia), New York, US (2020); “Valentine’s Day,” 50 Taffy Place, New York, US (2020); “Soul is a Four-Letter Word,” Museum Gallery, New York, US (2018). The artist completed her BFA at The School of Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, US) in 2016.
Preslav Kostov (b. 1998, BG) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Selected exhibitions include: "Notes Toward a Shell," Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “ArtSG,” Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN (2024); “New Now,” Guts Gallery, London, UK (2023); “Manifest,” SixtySix London, London, UK (2023); “Touch-atouch-a-touch-me, Berntson Bhattacharjee Gallery, London, UK (2023); “From The Cloud,” Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2023); “Skin Deep,” Studio West Gallery, Colorado Springs, US (2023); “A consciousness harnessed to flesh,” D Contemporary, England, UK (2023); “Now introducing 2022,” Studio West Gallery, Colorado Springs, US (2022). The artist completed his BA at Leeds Arts University (Leeds, UK) in 2020, and received his MA at Royal College of Art (London, UK) in 2023.
Julien Monnerie (b. 1987, Rennes, FR) lives and works in Paris, France. Recent solo exhibitions include “Primeur,” Studiolo, Paris, FR (2023); “AUTO,” with Clémentine Adou, DOC, Paris, FR (2021); “Commodity Fetishism,” Furiosa, MC (2019); “Dead Slow,” with Diane Severin Nguyen, Shivers Only at Exo Exo, Paris, FR (2019); and “Talking Alone,” Bel Ami, Los Angeles, US (2019). Recent group exhibitions include “Notes Toward a Shell," Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “La chambre a éhos, La Ferme Du Buisson, Noisiel, FR (2024); “Paris peinture Ici et Maintenant,” MABA, Nogent-sur-Marne, FR (2023); “L’atelier du Sud, Foundation Van Gogh,” Arles, FR (2023); “Homesick,” Shivers Only, Paris, FR (2021); “Ultra,” FRAC Bretagne, Rennes, FR (2021); “Paris peinture * Connoisseurs,” Jean Brolly, Paris, FR (2020); “Your Friends and Neighbors,” High Art, Paris, FR (2020); “The Sentimental Organization of the World,” Crèvecœur, Paris, FR (2020); “Cool Invitations 7,” XYZ Collective, Tokyo, JP (2020); “From the Xmas Tree of Lucy Bull 2,” From the desk of Lucy Bull, Los Angeles, US (2020). He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the École des Beaux-Arts de Rennes and the Glasgow School of Art.
Tsai Yun-Ju (b. 1998, Taichung, TW) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. She received her BA in Fine Arts from National Taipei University of the Arts (Taipei, TW) in 2020 and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art (London, UK) in 2022. Solo exhibitions: “A Mirror for the Romantic,” Tara Downs, New York, US (2023). Selected group exhibitions include: “Notes Toward a Shell,” Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “The Big Chill,” Bernheim, London, UK (2023-2024); “Eyes, Dusk, Phantasmagoria,” RupturXIBIT, London, UK (2022); “Why Don’t We Dance,” ASC Gallery, London, UK (2022); “Whirl, Bounce, Sway,” Safe House, London, UK (2022); “All the Guilty Thing,” Kiosk N1C, London, UK (2021); “Walls All Around, Fusion Unit,” Nottingham, UK (2021); “Reconnect,” Fiztrovia Gallery, London, UK (2021); “Test! Test! Test!,” Taipei, TW (2020); and “Overgrown,” CAA Xiangshan Art Commune, Hangzhou, CN (2019). Tsai Yun-Ju will have a solo presentation at Independent New York 2024. Her work is included in the permanent collection of ICA Miami.
Kiki Xuebing Wang (b. 1993, CN) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Solo exhibitions include: “Ripples,” Linseed Projects, Shanghai, CN (2023); “Marble Dessert,” Ginny on Fredrick x Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK (2023); “Lapwings,” Half Gallery, New York, US (2022). Kiki Xuebing Wang’s works have been presented in group exhibitions including: “Notes Toward a Shell,” Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “Tie up,” Linseed Projects, Seoul, KR (2023); “The Connection,” Billytown, The Hague, NL (2022); “A Place of One’s Own, Andrea fest Fine Art, Rome, IT (2022); “Harmonious Arrangement,” Half Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2022). The artist completed her BA at University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, US) in 2016, and received MA at Royal College of Art (London, UK) in 2020.
Pei Wang (b. 1989, China) lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. Selected exhibitions include: “Notes Toward a Shell,” Tara Downs, New York, US (2024); “Shape of times,” Yi Gallery, HangZhou, CN (2021); “China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Art Fund Young Art Talent Project, Beijing, CN (2018); “National Arts Fund Young Art Talents Rolling Funding Project (2018); “Back to Sensibility, Contemporary Art New Year’s Eve Exhibition (2017).
