The Future in Present Tense: Group Exhibition

Kelly Akashi
Neïl Beloufa
Candice Lin
Candice Lin & P. Staff
Patrick Jackson
Christine Sun Kim
Cassi Namoda
Em Rooney

François Ghebaly is proud to announce the opening of a new exhibition space in New York City, the gallery’s first expansion outside of Los Angeles since its founding in 2009. The debut exhibition brings together a cross section of gallery artists, with works by Kelly Akashi, Neïl Beloufa, Candice Lin, Patrick Jackson, Christine Sun Kim, Cassi Namoda, and Em Rooney, along with a collaborative work by Candice Lin & P. Staff. The exhibition will open at 389 Grand Street on the Lower East Side Friday, May 7 and will remain on view through June 5. 

The gallery’s exhibition program in New York will kick off with a series of group exhibitions and focused projects that collectively take stock of the gallery’s evolution and its heterogeneous artist roster. These group shows will use lenses of thematic affinity to draw out lines of connection and contrast among the many divergent practices that make up the gallery’s program.  

The first exhibition takes on the subject of the body, its porosity and vulnerability, and its capacity for pleasure and liberation. Certain works address the continuities of historical and current day traumas, notably the works by Christine Sun Kim and Cassi Namoda. Kelly Akashi and Em Rooney take poetic approaches to the cycles of birth and death, marking the passage of time and the fleetingness of life in their works. Patrick Jackson and Neïl Beloufa utilize the form of the wall relief sculpture—for Jackson in cement and car paint, for Beloufa in dyed fiberboard and false leather—to create surreal, playful scenes where the body and the mind merge. Suffusing the entire space is a collaborative work by Candice Lin and P. Staff called Hormonal Fog. The piece draws on research into hormone altering plants, using a “queer hacked” fog machine to produce a gender altering vapor. United in an embodied attention to material and form, the diverse works in the exhibition speak to François Ghebaly’s longtime commitment to boundary-pushing practices. 

After a series of group exhibitions and projects throughout the summer, François Ghebaly New York will transition to a run of solo exhibitions, with focused shows from Los Angeles-based artists Sayre Gomez, Sharif Farrag, and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork. The space will be led by gallery Senior Director Blaize Lehane. For more information on the debut exhibition or the gallery program at large, please email info@ghebaly.com.