As part of Eric Firestone Gallery’s debut season at its second East Hampton location at 62 Newtown Lane, more than 20 contemporary artists from outside the gallery’s program have been invited to respond to the concept of water and the foundational oceanic myths that populate our cultural imaginary. From fishing and surfing to baptism and migration, from quotidian marine life to fantastical sea gods and monsters, the works on view reflect diverse conceptual and formal interpretations on the theme. They bring to the fore a broad range of environmental, spiritual, feminist, and political perspectives.
Curated by Zoe Lukov and opening on July 2, Holy Water features painting, sculpture, and photography by established artists such as Radcliffe Bailey, Raúl de Nieves, Zhang Huan, April Gornik, and Jwan Yosef, rising stars like Bony Ramirez, Gabriela Ruiz, and Hiba Schahbaz, as well as emerging artists including Shagha Ariannia, Armani Howard, and Nereida Patricia. The exhibition will include artists who have never before presented their work on Long Island, alongside those with long trajectories of practicing on the East End. Hailing from a diverse range of countries, including Barbados, Dominican Republic, Iran, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Syria, Sweden, and beyond, each artist has a profound relationship with bodies of water and the way that both the myths and histories of our relationships with the water have deep cultural, spiritual, and political implications.
Radcliffe Bailey’s Nommo is a vessel adrift on sea that we cannot see, but which we remember—the bodiless heads, a recurring figure in Bailey’s work, are afloat on the structure, a passenger in this interstitial zone, an ancestral, spirit, or deity-like figure caught in the in-between. The work speaks to diaspora and migration and our communal and shared histories across the waters. The sublime and otherworldly are also explored in new works by Brandon Deener, a haunting portrait of Black Beauty that seems to be emerging from or perhaps sinking beneath the ocean’s surface; and by Armani Howard, who employs shadow and light to evoke spirit bodies that emanate from and occupy the waters. Zhang Huan broaches the spirit realm by collecting incense ash from temples and other holy sites and utilizing the detritus from the burning, the remnants of countless individual prayers and wishes, to paint—the ash becomes the medium and the pigment to reveal monochromatic seascapes.
Artists like Fawn Rogers approach the subject matter from both formal and environmentalist standpoints. Her works are portraits of oysters—bottom feeders responsible for cleaning the water, aphrodisiacs for consumption, desirable and potentially toxic, uncanny in their resemblance to sexual organs, and harvested in increasingly unsustainable ways. Raúl de Nieves has created a jeweled treasure, a coral relic, a crystal cave, a gorgeously bedazzled work that feels like it comes from the currents of our underwater imaginings of what sea creatures could really be.
New works by Bony Ramirez and Ricardo Partida explore the fantastical hybrid figures of gods and monsters. Partida references mythological creatures, while addressing the sensuality and power of the representation of queer Brown figures—in this case reinventing the goddess Venus, who was famously birthed from the sea foam. Ramirez mines rich references to the Caribbean and the Dominican Republic, repurposing mundane utilitarian objects of the tropics to create new iconography and reliquary.
Nicolette Mishkan reimagines the ancient mermaid myths for our fantastical and surreal times. Her sensual, sometimes pregnant, often bound and tied, hybrid fish-women seem to be both sites of our sexual desire and anxiety about female power. Nereida Patricia created new concrete and glass beaded works that speak to the trans body and the mythological and historical precedence for hybrid bodies that find nourishment within or are born from the water. Jwan Yosef’s white-on-white or white-on-gray minimal portraits of a man licking or drinking or open-mouthed guzzling, gasping ecstasy, might just as easily allude to a last moment of gripping breath.
Martha Edelheit’s nude figures of men and women huddled around the seals at the Central Park Zoo seem to echo art historical bathers cavorting at a lake or beach. Sheena Rose paints bright and joyful representations of the Black female form in different states of repose and play in relationship to water as a site of healing, athleticism, and rest. On the other hand, artists like April Gornik, a Sag Harbor-based landscape painter, capture the raw power of the sea and imagined waterscapes as they roil with weather—devoid of the human figure and monumental in their soaring portrayal of the environment.
Holy Water is curated by Zoe Lukov and features works by Shagha Ariannia, Radcliffe Bailey, Bhakti Baxter, Carlos Betancourt, Brandon Deener, Jen DeNike, Martha Edelheit, Raúl de Nieves, Naomi Fisher, April Gornik, Armani Howard, Zhang Huan, Jillian Mayer, Nicolette Mishkan, Stephen Neidich, Ricardo Partida, Nereida Patricia, Bony Ramirez, Fawn Rogers, Sheena Rose, Gabriela Ruiz, Jamilah Sabur, Hiba Schahbaz, and Jwan Yosef.
About Zoe Lukov
Zoe Lukov is a curator, writer, and Emmy-nominated producer. Her more recent independent curatorial project, Skin in the Game, was a much-lauded monumental exhibition that featured over 40 artists and took place during Miami Art Week 2021 and in Chicago during EXPO 2022. As chief curator of Faena Art in Miami Beach and Buenos Aires, she conceived and produced the first Faena Festival in 2018 and its follow-up in 2019, in addition to organizing major solo exhibitions by internationally recognized artists. She is a founding board member of Desert X, the non-profit site-specific exhibition based in California, and recently produced a documentary about Desert X 2021.
About Eric Firestone Gallery
Charting its own course since 2010, Eric Firestone Gallery reexamines significant yet underrecognized artists from the 20th and 21st centuries. Defined by its scholarly approach, the organization is recognized for taking a fresh look at historic work with a contemporary eye—reintroducing postwar artists to the discourse and the field at large. The gallery supports rigorous scholarship and archival research exploring the entirety of an artist’s creative vision and life, in close collaboration with institutions, academics, and collectors.
Eric Firestone Gallery established its first location in 2010 at 4 Newtown Lane in East Hampton, New York. In 2015, the gallery expanded with an additional loft space in a historic artist live/work building at 4 Great Jones Street in New York City. In 2020, the gallery opened its third location only a block away from its first New York site at 40 Great Jones Street. Summer 2022 marks the inauguration of the gallery’s fourth space, and second in the Hamptons, at 62 Newtown Lane. Each of these spaces is situated in an area of art historical importance, from the East End of Long Island to the heart of New York City—aligning with Eric Firestone Gallery’s mission to promote past modes of expression that remain ever present.
