Commemorating the 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘴 included in “One” @chorusprojects 🖼️
Incredibly grateful for @arrrchiee and his curatorial vision. Here are some of his words about my work that I’m glad exist:
“Desire necessitates two states of being, the
present and a desired elsewhere, such as beyond a car window with moisture permeating the glass separating the looker from the world. Bell Rush argues that desire should not be isolating, but instead communal and shared, like a landscape reflected in an iPhone screen, our two seemingly universal expanses coalescing, or the familiar vision of an empty bed in After Felix (2025), an ode to Felix Gonzalez-Torres. These desires are shared, passed down, disseminated like newspapers, or discarded to be born again, like the found frames that these images rest in.”
It was a pleasure showing work alongside @pelumisokunbi@melissamarks.nyc@kellynanomiranda@youngbauhaus 🌟🌟
Also- be sure to visit the current show “People, Times, and Lives,” up at Chorus now 🕰️ 📸 Documentation: @owen.m.f
Excited to announce my participation in the group exhibition “One,” featuring a few artworks from my 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘴 series alongside the wonderful work of César López, Melissa Marks, Kelly Nano-Miranda, and Pelumi Sokunbi. Congratulations to Archie for launching such an exciting curatorial project and for curating such a thoughtful show, with many more to come. Please join us this Saturday, 1/10, for the opening at 59 Jefferson Street in Brooklyn. Much love 🧬🖇️
I often think about Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ billboards of empty beds. How absence in an image can convey the gravity of loss, and in Gonzalez-Torres’ case, of his partner Ross (his “public of one”) to AIDS. At the same time, he invokes the choice to look or to not look, the mundanity of getting lost in the periphery. How every image relates to what surrounds it – be it a public, a highway, a white wall, an instagram feed.
He enlarges the intimate to the large-scale of the public, and I think about how now in the digital era we all do that in one shape or another. Yet, this experience has collapsed in on itself, accelerated. The dissemination of our personal lives, alongside the dissemination of catastrophe, exists in a feedback loop — dispersed outward and drawn inward, again and again.
World AIDS Day was on Monday and the current administration for the first time since 1988 chose to not commemorate it. It’s incredibly scary, a forgoing that speaks volumes about the cultural moment we’re in – one of devastation, saturation of media, and the choice of where to look.
After Felix
10x12”
Inkjet on newsprint, secondhand frame
I took this photo in my room senior year of college on my old digital camera. It appeared in my thesis and now it’s appearing again as part of my series 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘴.
