I still think this might be some kind of sick joke but as far as I can tell I will actually be going to the @swstudioprogram in the fall. Looking forward to meeting everyone!
Opening Saturday 5-7pm @ 52 Allen ‘Pulse Demon’ curated by Bradley Milligan and Davis Arney
Below Grand is pleased to present a group exhibition including Kadar Brock, Jessica Dickenson, Andrew Ross, and Alyson Vieria.
Borrowing its title from Pulse Demon (1996) by Japanese noise artist Merzbow, this exhibition explores feedback as both a framework and a generative method. In a musical context, feedback occurs when an output returns to its input, producing a loop that amplifies and distorts its source—often considered an unwanted byproduct of flawed sound engineering. Merzbow foregrounds this phenomenon, engaging and manipulating it deliberately. Similarly, the artists in this exhibition contend with feedback as a process of recombination, working with the often-overlooked remnants, precursors, and byproducts of studio practice.
The works on view are not offcasts, but recalibrated materials—tools, surfaces, debris, and fragments—that have been reactivated and brought into focus as artworks in their own right. Some works gather and recontextualize the detritus of creative production, indexing the act of making or preserving otherwise ephemeral states. Others originate as instruments or supports for artistic creation, later assuming an autonomous objecthood beyond their initial function. Across these approaches, feedback becomes a productive loop: accumulation, reuse, and transformation converge as artists foreground what is typically discarded or obscured. In this way, the artist emerges as a prosumer, transmuting the reverberations of their own practice into works that render visible the entangled processes of consumption and production.
Kadar Brock @kadar_brock_studio
Andrew Ross @andrewross_info
Allyson Vieira @allysonvieirastudio
Jessica Dickinson @onwardsteadfast
V-EFFECT
DAVIS ARNEY, GINA BEAVERS, DAVID KENNEDY CUTLER, BUTT JOHNSON, KYUNG-ME, ERIKA SHIBA, STACY LYNN WADDELL
By Appointment January 17 – March 1
60 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn NY
Halsey McKay is pleased to present V-Effekt. The artists in this exhibition both conceal and reveal labor to varying degrees across diverse approaches to making. Mundane domestic objects and ephemera are depicted, constructed, and suggested. Paint, gel pens, graphite, and inkjet transfers create, distort, and belie images. Illusions are tenderly formed, yet repeatedly interrupted, fragmented, and obscured.
Bertolt Brecht’s concept of Verfremdungseffekt—often translated as the “alienation effect” or “distancing effect”—asks audiences to question the seductive and immersive qualities of theatrical performance, rejecting these popularized Aristotelian conventions. By exposing the mechanics of the stage or employing formal interventions that reveal theatrical artifice, Brecht sought to encourage objective reflection on one’s role as an observer, inhibiting emphatic identification with characters or narrative. Ultimately, he believed this distancing could open a pathway toward liberation grounded in a critical analysis of social and economic structures.
In a world increasingly adept at capturing and redirecting our attention, the ability to look beyond surface-level messaging—whether in advertising, politics, or media—has become essential to retaining the human experience. The artists in this exhibition are acutely attuned to the dynamics of attention: how it is shaped, sustained, and disrupted. Through their practices, they not only exercise deliberate control over attention in the studio, but also invite viewers to become conscious of their own modes of seeing—both within the act of encountering an artwork and in the ways we observe and move through the world at large.
