ACTIONS
October 19 - November 30, 2024
Opening Saturday, October 19th, 3-7p
Graham Collins
Zoe Koke
Laurel Nakadate
By the time I was asked to write this release for Actions, the three-person exhibition by Graham Collins, Zoe Koke, and Laurel Nakadate at Sarah Brook Gallery, Los Angeles, the artworks had been selected, and the show had its title. My assignment, therefore, or how I’ve interpreted it, was to bridge the gaps between the artists and their works, to build a scaffold of meaning under the canopy of the title as a means of introduction to a way of looking—in this case encountering might be more apt—that may help in experiencing the show. In working through this writing, the title may end up having more significance than it would have had otherwise, as it is one of the pieces of information that I have been given from which the meaning I will attempt to make derives.
Now I also feel the need to say that the act of writing a release in an attempt towards meaning-making is something I do myself regularly: attempting to make meaning in writing releases for the exhibitions that I organize, where I have put two or three or more artists together, at first often instinctually, wherein there is something I have not yet verbalized about the artists that connects them for me. What they have in common might be a way of working, or something in their biography. At the onset of the project which then becomes the exhibition, it is rare, no, actually it never happens: at the onset, all is not known. It is more like there is an understanding of complimentary contours, where the edges of the works or ways of working suggest a fitting together that I feel, trust, and act on. But when the show is right, one that was meant to be, as the show materializes, as the works are completed and then put in place, installed in the exhibition, as the words come or struggle to come together in the text, more and more connections between the artists and the works emerge, root systems take over, wrapping around each other, becoming something feeling predestined. This is such a show. A show like this needs time to cure, ferment. The dust needs to settle before it can be cleaned away.
The writing of the release itself becomes a place of discovery, but the job of the text so often should be to not do too much, to not get in the way of the work or to take away from each viewer the pleasure of their own discovery, but instead to offer information or a way of thinking that could be relevant, or perhaps something so obviously subjective as to be a poem that hangs in the air like the perfume of someone who has recently left the room. At best the text functions as an attempt to stop the bleeding, at best the text is a decorated obstruction, at best the job of the text is to let the works be.
– Adam Marnie
Graham Collins (b. 1980, Washington, D.C.) received his BFA from the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, DC and his MFA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Notable solo exhibitions include Halsey McKay Gallery, New York; SE Cooper Contemporary, Portland, OR; Jacob Bjorn, Aarhus, Denmark; The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Almine Rech, Brussels, Belgium; Bugada & Cargnel, Paris, France and Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, United Kingdom. His work has been featured in exhibitions with Dunes, Portland, Maine; New Discretions, New York; Evening Hours, New York; C. Grimaldis, Baltimore, Maryland and Mitchell Innes & Nash, New York. Collins’ work is featured in numerous private and public collections including the North Carolina Museum of Art and the University of Iowa Stanley Museum. Collins is a lecturer in Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. He lives and works in New York and is represented by Halsey McKay Gallery.
Zoe Koke (b. 1989, Calgary, Alberta) holds an MFA from UCLA (2019) and a BFA from Concordia University (Montréal, 2013). Koke works across disciplines with an emphasis on painting. Recent solo exhibitions include Unchained Melody (Smart Objects, Los Angeles, 2024), in the office, (April April, Brooklyn, 2024) and the second space, Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich (2023). Recent group exhibitions include Everywhere It Goes (Mai 36, Zurich, currently on view), Adaptation (Franz Kaka, Toronto, 2024), fuckgirl collapse (Room 3557, Los Angeles, 2024), Agony/Serendipity (a two person exhibition with Nicholas Campbell), Smart Objects, Los Angeles (2023), the serpent's tail, Alice Amati, London, (2023); Doesn’t whine by blue moon, Ochi Projects, Los Angeles (2020): American Myth, Washer and Dryer Projects, Salt Lake City (2019); Made to Look Natural (with Ben Borden) Smart Objects, Landers, Ca (2018). Koke has held teaching roles at California State Summer School for the Arts and The University of Texas. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Laurel Nakadate is a photographer, filmmaker, video and performance artist. She was born in Austin, Texas and raised in Ames, Iowa. She received a B.F.A. from Tufts University and The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an M.F.A. in photography from Yale University. Her first feature film, STAY THE SAME NEVER CHANGE, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to be featured in New Directors/New Films at The Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center. Her second feature film, THE WOLF KNIFE, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award and an Independent Spirit Award. Her ten-year survey show, "Only the Lonely," was on view at MoMA P.S.1 in 2011. Her photo series, “Strangers and Relations” at The Des Moines Art Center opened their 2015/16 season. Nakadate’s most recent projects include the photo series, “The Kingdom”, and the critically acclaimed group show, “Mother” co-curated with Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects in New York City which opened in the fall of 2018 which travelled to New Mexico State University as "Labor: Art and Motherhood in 2020", and then in a new iteration of "Mother" at George Mason University in 2022. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art gallery, the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Princeton University Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, LACMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Saatchi Collection and other private collections in the US and abroad.
Adam Marnie is an artist and writer living in Houston, Texas, where he runs the publishing press F Magazine and the exhibition space F.
Perfect Map, 2024
Graham Collins
Casein on hemp laid on ceramic
9.25 x 6.25 x 2.75 inches
Mother’s Window, 2024
Zoe Koke
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches
Tyler, Texas #2, 2013
Laurel Nakadate
Type-C print
30 x 45 in / 31 x 46 inches
Edition 2/3
Mother’s Yellow Broom, 2024
Zoe Koke
Oil and acrylic on canvas
72 x 80 inches
The Kingdom Series, 2018
Laurel Nakadate
34 Inkjet exhibition prints
11 x 8-1/2 inches each (sheet)
Edition 4/8
Crop Circle, 2024
Graham Collins
Casein on hemp laid on ceramic
10.5 x 10.25 x 3 inches
God Wiggles, 2024
Graham Collins
Casein and graphite on hemp laid on ceramic
8 x 7.5 x 3 inches
Palingenesis, 2024
Zoe Koke
Oil on canvas
14 x 11 inches
Death of a Naturalist, 2024
Graham Collins
19 x 2 x 2.75 inches (3)
Casein on hemp laid on ceramic
Inbetweenlander, 2024
Graham Collins
Oil and casein on hemp laid on ceramic
8.75 x 6 x 3 inches
Elysium, 2024
Zoe Koke
Oil and acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 inches
The Exorcist Steps, 2024
Graham Collins
Casein on hemp laid on ceramic
10.25 x 1.75 x 2.5 inches
Graham Collins
Casein on hemp laid on ceramic
5.5 x 6 x 3 inches (2)
Chewbacca, 2016
Laurel Nakadate
Digital video
1:34 minutes loop
Edition of 6 with 3 Aps