PLAYGROUND
Leo Castañeda, Jeanie Choi, Arisleyda Dilone, Chioma Ebinama, Camilo Godoy, Daniel Greenfield-Campoverde, Ariel Mora, Melissa Stabile, VantaBlack.

Curated by Verónica Flom and Camilo Godoy
Jul 24 - Sep 14, 2019

Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 24, 2019, 7-10 pm

Dot Fiftyone Gallery is pleased to present Playground, a group exhibition co-curated by Camilo Godoy and Verónica Flom that features artists Leo Castañeda, Arisleyda Dilone, Chioma Ebinama, Daniel Greenfield-Campoverde, Camilo Godoy, Ariel Mora, Melissa Stabile, Jeanie Choi and VantaBlack.

The exhibition focuses on childhood as a site for the exploration of fragile, ludic, violent and poetic universes. Together, the artists in this exhibition work with ideas from their childhood as the material to address personal and political moments. From playing as a newscaster to documenting portraits of children who have been the target of gun violence; as well as to confronting one’s mother about gender or creating imaginary landscapes based on sci-fi video games, Playground interrogates the construction of identity by artists engaged with a deep observation on the formative years of their life.

Playgroundstarts with a sculpture by Ariel Morathat focuses on the artist’s fascination with fluorescent colors and illustrations found in children's books. This sculpture is followed by a video installation by Camilo Godoy that presents the artist as a young child reading Colombia’s evening news from 2002. Nearby the drawings of children by VantaBlack focus on victims of gun violence in Miami Dade County. Political memory is a subject in the drawings by Daniel Greenfield-Campoverdeof world maps that he made as a child in his notebook. Next to these drawings are two paintings by Leo Castañeda that investigate the universe of video game imagery to explore the intersection of science-fiction, futurism and post-human reality. The wearable sculptures hung on the walls by Melissa Stabile de Melloinvite the audience to a playful experience that reminds us of childhood toys. In the viewing room, the short film by Arisleyda Dilone engages in a tender conversation between the artist and her mother about womanhood, femininity and Dilone’s intersex body. The watercolor by Chioma Ebinamareferences the social construction of twins in Nigeria before this territory wasspiritually colonized and Christianized. Across from this watercolor are two photographic pieces by Jeanie Choi thatassemble photographs from her family album to reflect on her migration and assimilation process.

BIOS:

Leo Castañeda is an artist working in the intersection of virtual reality, gaming, painting, drawing and interactive sculpture. Castañeda's work deploys and deconstructs the socio-economic, racial, mythological and post-human anatomies embedded in the structure of video games. Castañeda received his BFA from Cooper Union in 2010, and in 2014 received his MFA at Hunter College. Residencies include SOMA Summer in Mexico City attended through the Cisneros Foundation (2014), "Of Games III" at Khoj International Artists Association, New Delhi India (2015), and the Bronx Museum AIM program (2017). In 2018 he received Locust Project's Wavemaker and the Oolite Arts Ellies grant to produce his video game and is also a recent recipient of the South Florida Cultural Consortium grant. He is currently a resident artist at Oolite Arts.

Jeanie Choi is an artist from Guadalajara, Mexico. Her work documents her own and others’ desires to reveal the unsaid using gestures and performances: sharing with the viewer what is private to the confessor, straddling the line between revelation and concealment. Subjects that deal with blurred truths in sexuality, recollection, and identity are persistent in her work, which has shown in galleries nationally and abroad and has been published in Capricious Magazine, Musée Magazine, American Photo Magazine, among others. She received her BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in New York, NY in 2012. Choi is currently based in Seattle, WA.

Arisleyda Dilone is a filmmaker, writer, actor, multilingual translator and model. As a filmmaker her practice is rooted in capturing simple, quiet, urgent conversations through a tender lens. In 2015, Arisleyda completed the short film, Mami y Yo y Mi Gallito/ Mom and Me and My Little Rooster,which screened at BAM (Brooklyn Arts Museum), New Orleans Film Festival, Harvard University, and Mercer Union to name a few. She has been awarded fellowships at UnionDocs Documentary Art Center, Queer Art Mentorship Program, and residencies at Squeaky Wheel Media and MacDowell Colony. She is a member of Diverse Filmmakers Alliance, Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and Ay Ombe Theater. Arisleyda is currently working on a feature length documentary about her intersex body and the construction of femininity in her Dominican-American family.

Chioma Ebinamais a Nigerian-American visual artist based in NY. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2016. Her ever-expanding practice is centered around work on paper but includes sculpture, and wearable art.   Her practice is afro-surreal. Her watercolors and ink works on paper arise from a meandering and layered process to create a fragmented narrative, like a short story collaged from scraps and notes. Every image is made with little to no preliminary drawing but thoughtful consideration of marks and materials. Her repertoire of reoccurring images—-archetypal female figures, fantastic beasts, and odd flora—are drawn from a diversity of narrative traditions including precolonial West African cosmology, Indian classical painting, Japanese manga, and Medieval art. She is interested in how the past and the invisible world of the present, can be fertile ground for new myths, and the mending of fractured identities within the African diaspora.

Camilo Godoy is an artist born in Bogotá, Colombia and based in New York, United States. He is a graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012; and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, 2013. Godoy was a 2018 Session Artist, Recess; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, Leslie-Lohman Museum; 2018 Artist-in-Residence, coleção moraes-barbosa; 2017 Artist-in-Residence, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP); among others. His work has been presented in New York in public space as a billboard and at venues such as Brooklyn Museum, CUE, Danspace Project, New York; and Mousonturm, Frankfurt; among others.

Daniel Greenfield-Campoverde is a visual artist based in New York City. He holds a Masters in Architecture from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in the same discipline from Pratt Institute. Exploring themes of identity, memory and place, he contests notions of cultural belonging through drawing, sculpture and installations. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: PS120 (Berlin, DE), Momenta Art (Brooklyn, NY), BRIC Arts Media (Brooklyn, NY), The Centro Cultural Chacao (Caracas, VE), Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs (Long Island City, NY), POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw, PL) and Radiator Arts (Long Island City, NY). He has participated in various residencies including the Watermill Center (Watermill, NY), The Wassaic Artists' Residency (Wassaic, NY), Hangar Centro de Investigação Artística (Lisbon, PT), Obras Art Foundation (Evoramonte, PT) and ZK/U -Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin, DE). He has received travel grants from Asylum Arts and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; the latter, to study Nicholas Grimshaw's "Eden Project" in Cornwall, UK. Most recently, he was selected to participate in the 38th cycle of the Artist in the Marketplace program (AIM) at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, commencing in the fall of 2018.  His work has been reviewed in Artnet, Art Observed, Architizer, El Nacional and ArteFuse.

Ariel Mora lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He graduated from the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes of Neuquén. He also studied philosophy and concrete music. He participated at the Programa de Artistas at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (2010-2011). In 2012 he was a resident at URRA Residency. Mora received a grant from Fundación Antorchas and took classes with artists Sergio Bazán, Marina de Caro and Jorge Macchi. Mora has shown in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Colombia, and Canada. He has exhibited in institutions such as Belleza y Felicidad, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Galeria Ruth Benzacar, Fundación Proa, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Galeria Del Infinito, Galería Braga Menendez, Galeria Nora Fish, Galeria Mite, among others.

Melissa Stabile de Mello lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. The relationship between observer and art objects is the core of her investigation. Through her both researches, "Comfortables" and "Air Narratives", the artist proposes to the public an immersive experience, a pause on the high speed of our modern life, to allow ourselves a hedonistic moment. A visual or touchable experience that can be individual or shared. The contribution of user’s imagination fulfills the pieces. The artist has at her historical a lot of contributions with collective art groups as Avaf (Axé Vatapá Alegria Feijao, 28th Bienal of São Paulo, 2008/ “Absolutely Venomous Accurately Falaceus,” Deitch Projects, 2008, Long Island City), Esponja, Solo Projects, São Paulo, curated by Yush Etiman and Tobi Maier. In 2017 she was resident at Pivô -São Paulo. In 2018 participated at the “Children’s Exhibition,” Tramway, Glasgow, UK, curated by Claire Jackson and Alexander Storey Gordon.

Chire Regans "VantaBlack" was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and lived there until her family relocated to Miami in the late 1980s. Crime was out of control in Saint Louis and Miami was viewed as a refuge of sorts by her mother. Her passion for art began soon after.  After graduating from Florida A&M University, Chire began to focus primarily on drawing from life and portraiture. As societal issues began to weigh heavily on her conscience, a message took shape behind the imagery. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement pushed Chire's art in the direction of social awareness and change. In late February of 2016, a number of young people became victims of an ongoing epidemic of gun violence in Miami-Dade County. Driven by emotion and the need to bring awareness to this epidemic, Chire began a series of memorial portraits of victims of violence in Miami Dade County and beyond. This series which Chire categorizes as Social Commentary Art, began with five portraits and now includes over 100 portraits of victims, and their stories. The goals of this Memorial Portrait Project, include addressing effects of gun violence in the community, raising awareness, and sparking a constructive dialogue about how to act to combat this epidemic.