White Columns Online #23:
A Shapeshifter
with a Heavenly Secret
curated by Tamara Khasanova

February 3–March 18, 2023 Online
The abstracted forms of two quasi-human deer-like figures leap atop a background of geometric shapes in muted tones of black, maroon, green, brown, and yellow.

Shane Smith
Faun in Spring time, 2021.
Acrylic and graphite on found wood pallet.
37.5 × 35.4 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A semi-transparent sculpture of an oversized insect with long, tentacle-like arms draping over the floor; the insect rests on its side, as if in sleep.

Noémie Jennifer Bonnet
Sleeper, 2022.
Polyurethane resin and raw pigment
9 × 3 × 4 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A photograph is ensconced in a sculptural gray and peach-colored frame. The photograph depicts a woman sitting on a rug with her back leaning against the couch behind her; her eyes meet the camera.

Takming Chuang
Sissy, 2022.
Photo (C print), clay, plastic bags
6.5 × 8 × 3 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A warm-toned painting of a bedroom. Several empty beer bottles, liquor bottles and glasses, along with a stack of books, are shown resting on a shelf at the bottom of the image. Behind is a bed with a yellow coverlet, an ornate red rug, a wooden chair, an open notebook, and a space heater. Blank sheets of paper, a green backpack and a white tote bag are hung on the walls of the room.

Bix Archer
Shifting House, 2021.
Oil on canvas
48 × 40 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A photograph of an abstract textile work hung on a clothesline outside. The work is a silken square stitched with abstract curving embroidery in blue and yellow, as well as a small piece of foliage attached in the bottom left corner. The background of the photograph is green with trees and plant life.

Morgan King
Being seen (without being seen), 2022.
Reflective fabric, silk fabric, stitching and plant photographed in Woodstock, NY
20 × 21 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A photograph of an interior with fine dark wood furniture is embedded in smushed clay. A yellow border frames the clay sculpture.

Takming Chuang
Palace Palace, 2021.
Photos (C print), clay, plastic bags
6 × 8 × 6.5 in
Courtesy of the artist.

Two oversized roaches cast in semi-transparent resin are hung on the wall. They face outwards, as if standing at attention, and clutch small white candles in their arms.

Noémie Jennifer Bonnet
Timekeepers, 2022.
Polyurethane resin, epoxy resin, soy wax, cotton, house paint, steel, and found driftwood from radioactively contaminated beach
each approximately 16 × 4 × 6 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A painting of a piece of paper on a warm ochre background. The paper, which is lit by a candle to the right, has been folded and unfolded; on it is a partially erased sketch of a seated nude figure with their hands outstretched. Below the sheet of paper is a pencil and, to the right, a small notebook and a passport photograph.

Bix Archer
I Erased the Image and Began Again, 2022.
Oil on canvas
20 × 18 in
Courtesy of the artist and Make Room Gallery.

An abstract painting of a diagram of a pentagon with two silhouetted figures in the foreground. In the background, a jockey rides a horse around a green racetrack. A coin that reads “LIBERTY” around the edge peeks out from behind the bottom of the pentagon.

Shane Smith
Liberty, 2020.
Acrylic, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas.
4.5 × 3 ft
Courtesy of the artist.

A many-tentacled, many-headed sea serpent rises out of the waves. The heads and tentacles are different colors, some painted, some collaged, and several of the “tentacles'' resemble human legs. The collaged elements include three cut-outs of women’s legs extending from the back of one of the serpent’s heads.

Greg Brown
Voyager, 2021.
Mixed media and collage on canvas
48 × 60 in
Courtesy of the artist.

A screenshot of a two-channel video. On the left, a little girl wearing a wedding dress and veil grins at the camera. The image on the right shows a bouquet of red roses topped with a white envelope; the bottoms of two mylar balloons bob just out of the frame.

Denisse Griselda Reyes
A Shapeshifter with a Heavenly Secret, 2021.
2-channel video, color, sound
Duration: 13:53 min
Courtesy of the artist.

Participating Artists

Bix Archer
Noémie Jennifer Bonnet
Greg Brown
Takming Chuang
Morgan King
Shane Smith
Denisse Griselda Reyes

Exhibition Description

I

In 2014, upon awakening from the deepest sleep of my life, it seemed as if part of my memory was lost to time forever. Months or years later, I realized it wasn’t lost but transfigured into a new set of memories that hardly bore any resemblance to the past ones. As I slept, my memories rebelled and established their own governing body while already equally inhabiting mine; they desired to take up as much space as possible without negotiating the existence of the present. And occasionally, only if it served their own needs, they would also return to their abandoned, shapeless semblance of the past. 

II

For the last few months, my mind has been preoccupied with the question of whether our memories have the capacity to shapeshift; whether memory can, in and of itself, be a catalyst for shapeshifting beyond the body and materiality assigned to it. Oftentimes we assume that shapeshifting as a process must take the form of bodily transformation. The being’s external constitution transfigures while its internal form remains unchanged. For centuries, human imagination has contemplated the nature and potential of shapeshifting through mythology, folklore, speculative fiction, and various forms of popular culture. Shapeshifting has become representative of the human desire to alter oneself in order to be something else, something that would help one acquire a more desirable form of existence in comparison to what one already is or has. On the other hand, stories like Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis or Virginia Woolf’s Orlando exemplify involuntary change, forcing a character to grapple with and adapt to the obstacles that follow. In her work Ontology of the Accident, French philosopher Catherine Malabou muses that regardless of the extent of the metamorphoses at play, “it is only the external form of the being that changes, never its nature.” Malabou challenges the separation and differentiation between the physical and the psyche, noting that the transformations of the latter have been regarded considerably less in the philosophical, psychoanalytic and neurological fields. 

III

In the same work, Malabou introduces us to the concept of destructive plasticity, a transformation arising out of darkness, which could offer a way to comprehend the psychological shifts that venture into our lives without warning. Such changes, often startling and unwelcome, result in a kind of “distancing of the individual who becomes a stranger to herself.” We try to look back and recognize ourselves in relation to what our memories turned into, but the channel between then and now is hardly mendable. Throughout our lives, our memories morph into something unrecognizable and unfamiliar. For all I know, even if memory is a single unit of remembering, perhaps once recalled it becomes less and less an attempt at reliving or recollecting but engenders a novel way of evolving, unfolding and becoming. Perhaps it is in the transfiguration of our memories that we become shapeshifted into a new existence, a new nature of sorts?

IV

A Shapeshifter with a Heavenly Secret, which borrows its title from Denisse Griselda Reyes’s video piece, is a selection of works from the Curated Artist Registry that offers to take you on a journey of shapeshifting, metamorphoses, alterations and changes to the passage(s) of time, memory, mind and the body. The exhibition’s poetics gesture toward different stages of one’s transformation as they move in dialogue with one another. To awaken from the deep dream with pieces such as Sleeper (2022) and Timekeepers (2022) by Noémie Jennifer Bonnet and dare to follow the whimsical dragon-like creature in Greg Brown’s painting Voyager (2021). To reckon with the ephemeral record of one’s household or a memory of a place with Bix Archer’s Shifting House (2021) and Takming Chuang’s Palace Palace (2021). To conceive of the undetectable or distorted in Being seen (without being seen) (2022) by Morgan King and Faun in Spring time (2021) by Shane Smith. To render one life into multitudes of moments with Denisse Griselda Reyes’s A Shapeshifter with a Heavenly Secret (2021). To confront the change when “you decide to leave the person you were.”

I would like to say thank you to Matthew, Erin, and Violet for all your help as well as your support and encouragement throughout the process and my time as a Curatorial Assistant at White Columns.

Tamara Khasanova is a curator, researcher, and writer living in Brooklyn, NY.

This exhibition is the twenty-third in a series of online exhibitions curated exclusively from White Columns’ Curated Artist Registry.

Video Works

Denisse Griselda Reyes
A Shapeshifter with a Heavenly Secret, 2021
2-channel video, color, sound
Duration: 13:53 min
Courtesy of the artist.

Event

White Columns TALKS: Denisse Griselda Reyes and Tamara Khasanova
Wednesday, March 22 at 5pm

White Columns is pleased to present an online conversation between artist Denisse Griselda Reyes and curator Tamara Khasanova on shapeshifting, the boundaries between myth and reality, and the usage of the archival as a tool for storytelling, organized on the occasion of the online exhibition A Shapeshifter with a Heavenly Secret.

The abstracted forms of two quasi-human deer-like figures leap atop a background of geometric shapes in muted tones of black, maroon, green, brown, and yellow.
A semi-transparent sculpture of an oversized insect with long, tentacle-like arms draping over the floor; the insect rests on its side, as if in sleep.
A photograph is ensconced in a sculptural gray and peach-colored frame. The photograph depicts a woman sitting on a rug with her back leaning against the couch behind her; her eyes meet the camera.
A warm-toned painting of a bedroom. Several empty beer bottles, liquor bottles and glasses, along with a stack of books, are shown resting on a shelf at the bottom of the image. Behind is a bed with a yellow coverlet, an ornate red rug, a wooden chair, an open notebook, and a space heater. Blank sheets of paper, a green backpack and a white tote bag are hung on the walls of the room.
A photograph of an abstract textile work hung on a clothesline outside. The work is a silken square stitched with abstract curving embroidery in blue and yellow, as well as a small piece of foliage attached in the bottom left corner. The background of the photograph is green with trees and plant life.
A photograph of an interior with fine dark wood furniture is embedded in smushed clay. A yellow border frames the clay sculpture.
Two oversized roaches cast in semi-transparent resin are hung on the wall. They face outwards, as if standing at attention, and clutch small white candles in their arms.
A painting of a piece of paper on a warm ochre background. The paper, which is lit by a candle to the right, has been folded and unfolded; on it is a partially erased sketch of a seated nude figure with their hands outstretched. Below the sheet of paper is a pencil and, to the right, a small notebook and a passport photograph.
An abstract painting of a diagram of a pentagon with two silhouetted figures in the foreground. In the background, a jockey rides a horse around a green racetrack. A coin that reads “LIBERTY” around the edge peeks out from behind the bottom of the pentagon.
A many-tentacled, many-headed sea serpent rises out of the waves. The heads and tentacles are different colors, some painted, some collaged, and several of the “tentacles'' resemble human legs. The collaged elements include three cut-outs of women’s legs extending from the back of one of the serpent’s heads.
A screenshot of a two-channel video. On the left, a little girl wearing a wedding dress and veil grins at the camera. The image on the right shows a bouquet of red roses topped with a white envelope; the bottoms of two mylar balloons bob just out of the frame.

Shane Smith, Faun in Spring time, 2021. Acrylic and graphite on found wood pallet, 37.5 × 35.4 in. Courtesy of the artist. (The abstracted forms of two quasi-human deer-like figures leap atop a background of geometric shapes in muted tones of black, maroon, green, brown, and yellow.)

Noémie Jennifer Bonnet, Sleeper, 2022. Polyurethane resin and raw pigment, 9 × 3 × 4 in. Courtesy of the artist. (A semi-transparent sculpture of an oversized insect with long, tentacle-like arms draping over the floor; the insect rests on its side, as if in sleep.)

Takming Chuang, Sissy, 2022. Photo (C print), clay, plastic bags, 6.5 × 8 × 3 in. Courtesy of the artist. (A photograph is ensconced in a sculptural gray and peach-colored frame. The photograph depicts a woman sitting on a rug with her back leaning against the couch behind her; her eyes meet the camera.)

Bix Archer, Shifting House, 2021. Oil on canvas, 48 × 40 in. Courtesy of the artist. (A warm-toned painting of a bedroom. Several empty beer bottles, liquor bottles and glasses, along with a stack of books, are shown resting on a shelf at the bottom of the image. Behind is a bed with a yellow coverlet, an ornate red rug, a wooden chair, an open notebook, and a space heater. Blank sheets of paper, a green backpack and a white tote bag are hung on the walls of the room.)

Morgan King,  Being seen (without being seen), 2022. Reflective fabric, silk fabric, stitching and plant photographed in Woodstock, NY, 20 × 21 in. Courtesy of the artist. (A photograph of an abstract textile work hung on a clothesline outside. The work is a silken square stitched with abstract curving embroidery in blue and yellow, as well as a small piece of foliage attached in the bottom left corner. The background of the photograph is green with trees and plant life.)

Takming Chuang, Palace Palace, 2021. Photos (C print), clay, plastic bags, 6 × 8 × 6.5 in. Courtesy of the artist. (A photograph of an interior with fine dark wood furniture is embedded in smushed clay. A yellow border frames the clay sculpture.)

Noémie Jennifer Bonnet, Timekeepers, 2022. Polyurethane resin, epoxy resin, soy wax, cotton, house paint, steel, and found driftwood from radioactively contaminated beach, each approximately 16 × 4 × 6 in. Courtesy of the artist. (Two oversized roaches cast in semi-transparent resin are hung on the wall. They face outwards, as if standing at attention, and clutch small white candles in their arms.)

Bix Archer, I Erased the Image and Began Again, 2022. Oil on canvas, 20 × 18 in. Courtesy of the artist and Make Room Gallery. (A painting of a piece of paper on a warm ochre background. The paper, which is lit by a candle to the right, has been folded and unfolded; on it is a partially erased sketch of a seated nude figure with their hands outstretched. Below the sheet of paper is a pencil and, to the right, a small notebook and a passport photograph.) 

Shane Smith, Liberty, 2020. Acrylic, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas, 4.5 × 3 ft. Courtesy of the artist. (An abstract painting of a diagram of a pentagon with two silhouetted figures in the foreground. In the background, a jockey rides a horse around a green racetrack. A coin that reads “LIBERTY” around the edge peeks out from behind the bottom of the pentagon.)

Greg Brown Voyager, 2021. Mixed media and collage on canva, 48 × 60 in. Courtesy of the artist. (A many-tentacled, many-headed sea serpent rises out of the waves. The heads and tentacles are different colors, some painted, some collaged, and several of the “tentacles” resemble human legs. The collaged elements include three cut-outs of women’s legs extending from the back of one of the serpent’s heads.)

Denisse Griselda Reyes, A Shapeshifter with a Heavenly Secret, 2021. 2-channel video, color, sound. Duration: 13:53 min. Courtesy of the artist. (A screenshot of a two-channel video. On the left, a little girl wearing a wedding dress and veil grins at the camera. The image on the right shows a bouquet of red roses topped with a white envelope; the bottoms of two mylar balloons bob just out of the frame.)