Fortress of Solitude
Kajahl, Joe Bochynski, Roque Montez, Steven Pestana, Marco Tulio Venegas
Curated by Andrew Woolbright
Press Release
In Umberto Eco’s essay “Travels in Hyperreality,” Eco articulates his theory that two of the defining characteristics of America are the hologram and our need to represent history and art through dioramas (fabricated states of the hyperreal). In 2002, Eco made the astonishing effort to visit every wax museum in California—a pilgrimage in search of the underlying id of the American hologram. He noted the re-occurring tableaus: Da Vinci’s Last Supper, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. The same tropes reenacted endlessly, a mixing of representations and realized images, establishing and acting out our visualized memory and our collective dreams of history.
For this exhibition, Super Dutchess has assembled a group of artists dealing with anachronism and surrealist anthropology. Fortress of Solitude references Superman’s isolated retreat in the Arctic, where he keeps the possessions and fetish objects of his many adventures. One witnesses a construction of a never realized tableau of an alternative American history, a proposal for a wax museum from a different aesthetic timeline. This is a prop room of a museum that could have been but never was. It is a room that addresses cultural trauma head on, unearths what has been buried, and examines the undone seams both in aesthetics and historical representation. It is a room that delights in cultural pluralism, in a classical sci-fi Kubric-esque aesthetic, and a repurposing of recognizable visual language? (the artist Kajahl has said his practice is a form of LARPing as a court painter, a-la-Velazques). It is reaching into the well of history with a dirty hand, and stirring the waters into a new sculptural material, a gift for Umberto Eco he will never witness.
Kajahl was born and raised in Santa Cruz, CA. He received a BFA from San Francisco State University and spent his final year studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze, Italy. In the spring of 2012 he received his MFA from Hunter College in New York City.
He has exhibited work in group shows including 30 Americans; Next Generation, Contemporary Wing, Washington, DC and at MoCADA, emerging; Visual Art and Music in a Post-Hip-Hop Era, Brooklyn, NY. In 2013 Kajahl was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant. In 2016 he participated in the Joan Mitchell Center, Artist in Residence in New Orleans, LA. In 2017 his second solo show at Richard Heller in Los Angeles, CA.
Without a need for chronological consistency or narrative support, KAJAHL carefully pieces together hybrid entities that take on allusions to classical painting, but become disruptive through their divergent multi-faceted origins. Much like Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, who gave life to a humanoid from non-living matter, KAJAHL seamlessly sews parts together from the fringe of art history into new transformative identities.
Joseph Bochynski- Born in Buffalo, NY in 1986, Bochynski was an elementary school safety patrol member from 1996-1997, altar boy from 1998-2002, blood donor from 2002-2009, and a parent since December 2016. He received a BA in Mathematics from Hobart College in 2008, and an MFA in painting from RISD in 2013.
Civics, symbolism, and archeology are three main themes Bochynski explores. Symbolism, as related to civics and authority, is a powerful force that connects the spirit animals of the past to the app icons of today. The archeology of these subjects highlights their repeating but progressive nature.
His first artist book, “Civics” was published in 2016 by CEPA Press with support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He held a fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2017 as well as a scholarship to the Vermont Studio Center in 2015. Bochynski has shown his work throughout the northeast as well as in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Roque Montez Born in 1988, Los Angeles. BFA from UC Davis, MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Montez has exhibited nationally, including shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Rhode Island. His work is included in the RISD library collection and Center for the Study of Political Graphics. Current interests are masculinity, the exoticism of otherness, and the erasure of collective memory.
Steven Pestana is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his BA in Art History from NYU and his MFA in Digital Media from RISD. He has exhibited in numerous venues including the Rubin Museum, Knockdown Center, Spring/Break Art Show, Satellite Art Show, BRIC, Invisible Exports, Grin Providence, Rhode Island College, and Space 776. He was the recipient of a Puffin Grant for Fine Arts and has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Mass MoCA, and Santa Fe Art Institute. Steven Pestana is also a contributing writer for the Brooklyn Rail.
Marco Tulio Venegas Born in 1995 Cartagena, Colombia. He earned his BFA in Drawing and Painting at the State University of New Paltz New York.
Marco’s work is a navigation, striving to find the sacredness within. “The gross reflections of my quenched psychological desire to venture deep into the mind and spirit with psychedelia lead me to one conclusion; you do not need psychedelics to experience sacredness. For even the poems of Neil Young brings forth sanctity in my world. My work is a testament to those trying times of my ego being backhanded by my own shadows.” - Marco Tulio Venegas