Drawing as Portal: Gesture, Sound is an exhibition featuring Beau Rhee of Atelier de Geste, with Audra Wolowiec, and curated by Emie Diamond of The Curateur Collective. This exhibition explores drawing and notation, gesture and sound in relation to environment. Rhee’s performative drawings and spatial works exist in dialogue with the material qualities of language presented by Wolowiec. Mounted on the core of a frame and stripped of ornamentation, the works are raw and yet reveal a distinctly hedonic wave of movement, oscillating and reverberating within space.

Rhee’s organic forms, sculptural traces, olfaction and lines present a portal into her extensive visual practice. Inspired by biology and her experiences with synesthesia, she activates the viewer’s haptic senses, creating an intimate mise en scène. Further exploring space within a space, there are photographic moments in the room presenting Rhee accompanied by her collaborators in the atelier. This ephemeral exhibition also highlights several of Wolowiec’s work from her publication Workbook for a Performance which presents a physical representation of sound through score. By way of text extracted from Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves from 1931, Wolowiec incorporates space and breath, transforming language into a poetic, experimental sound, and manipulating the meaning of speech.

Both Rhee and Wolowiec are interdisciplinary artists with practices deeply rooted in rhythmic timing, movement, breath and the body in relation to its inhabited ecosystem. A collaborative ‘spatial act’ entitled Thick Air will be performed by both artists. The human body and Earth are forever inexplicably bound, both consisting of 70 percent water, with 70 percent of the oxygen we take into our lungs produced by the oceans. In a nod to “World Oceans Month” a portion of the proceeds from this exhibition benefit Earth Justice.

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Beau Rhee’s studio Atelier de Geste is based on gesture and body-space concepts extending into various media: performance, drawing, objects, scent, textiles. Collaborative work grounds the studio in social practice, and haptic material experiences connect the body to the senses, ecosystem and space. She has exhibited work and performed internationally; most recently at The 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, The Kitchen, Aronson Gallery at Parsons, Kaaitheatre Brussels, MoMA/PS1, Sight Unseen Offsite, Slought Foundation, and Bard Graduate Center Gallery. She is an adjunct professor at The New School / Parsons School of Design. Honors include: Art & Olfaction Award Finalist, The Bryk Art Scholarship (Columbia University) & New Heads BNP Paribas Art Award Finalist.

Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose work oscillates between sculpture, installation, text and performance with an emphasis on sound and the material qualities of language. Her work has been shown internationally and in the United States at MASS MoCA, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Art in General, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Stony Brook University, Studio 10, The Poetry Project, and the Center for Performance Research. Featured in BOMB, Modern Painters, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, CAA Journal, Sound American, and reductive journal. Residencies include Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Complex Systems Art and Physics Residency at the University of Oregon, supported by a National Science Foundation Grant, and Dieu Donné. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design, SUNY Purchase, and Dia:Beacon.