We are pleased to announce an eclectic summer show which presents the emerging art positions of Ryan Cosbert, Lucas Kaiser, Kemi Onabulé, Alina Sokolova, and Kemar Wynter. Combining abstract painting, drawing, works on paper, and figurative painting, the show depicts the themes of identity, observations on labor and societal phenomena, in nature, and of environmental perseverance. The title of the show »I Saw It Hang Down There« refers to the drawing and painting of Kemi Onabulé’s work ‘Saw It Hang Down’, from 2020, which is a painting, depicting a tree or shrub, showing the roots and surface of an expansive plant organism.

This exhibition can be read like the novel »A Journal of the Plague Year« both as a narrated work group by the artists, and as non-fiction. It is a historical account of the events of the Great Plague of London in 1665, based on extensive research and written as if seen through an eyewitness experience by the author, in this case by the artistic position. In addition to the show in the Berlin gallery space, we have installed four individual Online Viewing Rooms by Kemi Onabulé, Lucas Kaiser, Alina Sokolova, and Kemar Wynter to present an extended body of work by each artist’s practice.

Ryan Cosbert is a painter, installation and mixed media artist whose practice focuses on abstract works, along with political and historical narratives. Through color and mixed media, her paintings and sculptures investigate depth and composition as a way to create a relationship between the external and internal implications of the African diaspora. With the painter’s roots of Haitian and Guyanese descent, Cosbert is interested in creating a relationship within the viewer’s reception, in order to provoke and foster a multi-disciplinary dialogue. Cosbert researches the consequences of subjugation and oppression along with their historical and generational impact on black communities. Both color and texture play an important role in her practice which correlate on subjects and matter of investigation. By applying forms and grids in her current work, Cosbert’s vibrant abstract paintings imply a sense of control through what she refers to color fields and tiles. These forms create a geometrical balance built upon by the use of multiple layers of paint, texture, and physical objects which give the perception of three-dimensional compositions.