Group Show PHREEEK MAGNET Celebrates Eccentricity in the Extreme

Undercurrent Projects is calling all freaks for tonight’s opening of PHREEEK MAGNET, a group show curated by artists Joanne Leah and Savannah Spirit.The two-week exhibition features work by five artists working with a variety of media.

"It all began when we started to observe artists' reactions to the surreal and violent world we live in and how we have no choice but to participate in this circus," says Leah, who is a first-time curator. "As I visited artists studios, heard their stories and discussed their processes, I felt as if I was renewing my relationship to this city and it's spaces."

David Henry Nobody Jr experiments with a cross between performance art, photography, and collage which he has coined as “Resemblagè.” In a private setting, Nobody Jr reimagines his appearance through food, face paint, trash, wigs, doll parts — you name it —photographs the result, and shares these Anti-Selfie portraits on his Instagram account. In the show, the artist’s virtual reality, quasi-secret existence “comes full circle back into life” in the form of arresting prints.

Lisa Levy is a painter, conceptual artist, comedian, and self-described psychotherapist with a talk-show host alter-ego named Dr. Lisa S.P. She has contributed three “self-reflection” mirrors to the show, with slogans such as “I Like To Watch” and “Proof that you exist.” In preparation for the show, Levy also interviewed Nobody Jr and Paddy Johnson for her radio show, Dr. Lisa Gives a Shit.

Doug Henders exhibits his project unReal People, a collection of drawings the artist made in the late 80s. The pieces expose the imagined secret society of an art-world swinger network, decidedly NSFW in their Albrecht Durer-inspired lines. Meanwhile, Jane LeFarge Hamill’s paintings visualize emotional states in a messy manner. Her three works, Fucksalad,  On a dirt bike, and a cactus, and Tertlingua 2, look to be part brain scan, part exploding star and strive to “depict an applied, but honestly felt, emotional space that exists between the memory of looking, being looked at.”

Then there is Gavin Wilson’s Turning Inside Out-Ness, his series of eerie masks/hoods that he describes as “discipline helmets” and “a second skin of ritual significance.” Wilson’s colorful, composite sculptures round out the show on a slightly esoteric note, with an after-taste of fetish, shamanism, and hermaphroditism. "Eccentric human behavior is mistaken for sins of society," concludes PHREEEK MAGNET's press release. "Let your freak flag fly."

PHREEEK MAGNET opens tonight at Undercurrent Projects on the Bowery in NYC and runs until July 29. Find out more on the show's page.

Related:

Trip On Church with Photo Series 'Acid Mass'

We Spoke to Montreal’s Premiere Art Vandal About Her Naked Army

This Art Film Tells A Dark Family History Through Haunting Masks