It’s been said that everyone we meet in our dreams is ourselves in a different mask. I think it’s true, and I also believe that every figure an artist makes functions in the same way. They are the artist’s avatars in the world of symbols. Inside art, which so often has the logic of a dream, the artist deploys their self in new guises. Sometimes it’s explicit, as in a self-portrait. Sometimes, when it’s a portrait of another person, it’s more complex; it’s a form of possession. When the work ventures into allegory or abstraction, the self becomes more obscured. But it’s still there, peeking out at us, waiting and wanting to be seen.

The works in this show comprise a crowd. Each piece, each one figurative in its own way and with its own logic, represents a surrogate for the artist who made it. In this way the gallery is filled with people. They array themselves cheek-by-jowl. In placing all these creatures in the enclosed space of the gallery, we see one of the only surely safe ways for a mass of bodies to gather together today—not as flesh, but instead as representations of flesh. 

For almost two years now, we’ve been compelled to think a lot about our bodies (a.k.a. figures) because there was an invisible entity out there that wanted to destroy them. It focused the body as a center of uncertainty, and it made me think about the many ways artists might interact with figuration. And though not all of the work in the show was made in response to the pandemic, it did loom as an organizing principle. Nor is all the work in the show strictly figurative; some of it bends if not breaks the definition. And not all the figures are human. But in each piece, we see each artist grappling in one way or another with the mixed blessing of being embodied. There’s anxiety here but also joy; trauma but also comedy. Sound the proximity alert. - Jesse Pearson

Jesse Pearson is the founder and editor of Apology magazine and the host of the Apology podcast. He has curated exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, and Melbourne. He has published journalism in Playboy, GQ, BookForum and more and is the former longtime editor-in-chief of Vice.

Documentation by Brica Wilcox