DOUBLES MATCH Yikui (Coy) Gu, Yin Ming Wong and TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION Cadence Giersbach, Susan Rowe Harrison

FEBRUARY 25 – MARCH 19, 2023 Opening Reception – Sunday, February 26, 2023, 4 – 6 pm

PS122 Gallery is pleased to present Doubles Match and Transcendental Meditation, the first two winning projects of the 2023 Exhibition Open Call, selected by a three-member jury composed of artist Abigail Deville and curators Rachel Gugelberger (Wave Hill) and Sara Reisman (National Academy of Design). The exhibitions will be on view from February 25 – March 19, 2023.

PS122 Gallery’s 2023 Exhibition Open Call marks the revival of the program—held annually since the 1986-87 season—that helped to define PS122 Gallery’s long history. This organization gave first exhibitions to artists such as Peter Halley, Keith Haring, and Amy Sillman, among many others; and exhibited hundreds more artists throughout the years.

Doubles Match is an exhibition of recent paintings by Yikui (Coy) Gu and Yin Ming Wong. Both artists center their Asian American identities at the forefront of their work, using it as a catalyst to explore social-political issues within American society. As first-generation immigrants or the child of immigrants, their works explore interracial dynamics, code-switching, cultural heritage, and what it means to be American today. Both artists grew up in communities where they were often the only person of Asian descent, surrounded by Whiteness, which necessitated a performative aspect to their upbringings. Their works embrace a whimsical nature, collapsing a conventional pictorial space, at times both accepting and rejecting traditional Western modes of representation.

Transcendental Meditation is an exhibition featuring Cadence Giersbach and Susan Rowe Harrison. Nature allows us to transcend our immediate context. As the world becomes more technological and AI and the internet create new communities and frontiers, we are drawn to the tactile world. Drawn to things we can touch—the earth, the air, the warmth of another human, a bird on a tree, the squirrel in the park, a garden. Many have turned to nature to escape the stress of the pandemic in the shadow of the climate crisis. Interacting with plants offers beauty, awe, and grounding. A garden transcends its boundaries and is a place where we can understand the world—it puts us in an active dialogue with living matter. The garden is an antidote to a culture in which mind and body, reason and action are separated. And much like art, the garden brings together thinking, feeling, making, and performing. It is fiction like art is—the garden frames a view—creating a microcosm of nature—allowing one to step through the frame into the artwork or the garden, to another world mentally and physically. It is a portal to another world.

Doubles Match
Yikui (Coy) Gu, Yin Ming Wong
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Transcendental Meditation
Cadence Giersbach, Susan Rowe Harrison
February 25 – March 19, 2023

PS122 Gallery
150 First Avenue
New York, NY 10009

Free and Open to the Public, Saturday + Sunday, 1–6pm
Masking strongly recommended