OK SO WE’RE FIGHTING
April 5 - May 25
Opening reception: April 5, 5-9 pm
Artists: Modou Dieng Yacine | William J. O’Brien | Kris Waymire
Old Friends is pleased to present Ok So We’re Fighting, a multigenerational selection of artists invoking confrontation and conflict to relate intricate structures of identity. In dialogue with social critique, each artist constructs playful material relationships, carrying through a syncopated sense of pattern and appreciation for the permeable space of abstraction. This exhibition includes work by: Modou Dieng Yacine, William J. O’Brien, and Kris Waymire.
Pulling conceptual friction into their material processes, these artists fix denim to photo print, pierce felt, and collage cowhide to suggest a resonant dissonance. William J. O’Brien holds this tension with levity in geometric forms that draw from legacies of Outsider and Funk art to embrace a vulnerable awkwardness. Preserving a sense of malleability, he envelops ceramic figures in an oily blue-black surface in Bashful Cover, 2023, and Puzzler, 2023. In technicolor glass beads, Kris Waymire tessellates with geometric patterns from Old Bering Sea hunting tools, using leather, sinew, and furs to reclaim familial Iñupiaq knowledge.
Modou Dieng Yacine similarly calls upon historical figures to construct an iconographic language through which he navigates Black identity and systems of colonial oppression. We all have a Lumumba, 2023 continues a series of portraits of the revolutionary Congolese politician Patrice Lumumba, projecting his gaze through serial repetition. Bestowing the figure with sunglasses and soccer jerseys in Dieng Yacine’s characteristic nod to Pop, the artist places Lumumba as an omnipresent everyman.
As each artist negotiates psychological conflicts, their works trace an inner logic. Materially rich processes meet the bodily gesture of abstraction, taking on a significant dimensionality. In this coalescence, surfaces record both physical impressions and emotional residue.
Ok So We’re Fighting will be on view at old friends, 3405 N. Paulina St., Chicago, IL from April 5 – May 25, 2024, with a reception on Friday, April 5, 5-9p. For more information, please contact the gallery at office@oldfriendsgallery.com
Above: William J. O’Brien, Bashful Cover, 2023, ceramic, 16 x 12 x 3 inches.
Must See Exhibition on Artforum
Modou Dieng Yacine (b. 1970, Senegal) is a contemporary African visual artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Dieng Yacine has spent the last 20 years between the United States and his native city of Dakar, Senegal. His work dwells on notions of asymmetrical parallelism, a term invented by African poet and philosopher Léopold Sédar Senghor, defined as a diversified repetition of rhythm in time and space. Dieng Yacine attended the National School of Art in Dakar, and holds a BFA from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Senegal, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, CA. He has been included in exhibitions internationally, at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA; Dakar Biennale, Dakar, Senegal; and Museum of African Diaspora Art, New York, NY, among others. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; and the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, St Louis, MO.
William J. O’Brien (b. 1975, Eastlake, OH) works in multiple media: drawing, painting, ceramic, metal sculpture, installation, and assemblage. Inspired by Modernism and the history of material usage of Outsider Art, O’Brien’s multidisciplinary practice is a search for identity and genuine expression through material and process. His prolific output in these various media offers a visual profusion of color, pattern, and exuberant excess. O’Brien has held solo exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Renaissance Society, Chicago, KMAC Museum, Louisville, MAD Museum, NYC, Witte De With, Rotterdam, and The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City among others. In 2014 he had his first major museum survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago curated by Naomi Beckwith. He has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the UCross Foundation. O’Brien has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and Artadia. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Clinic, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Miami Art Museum, Pérez Art Museum, Hammer Museum, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago. O’Brien is also Professor of Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Kris Waymire (b. 1999, Seattle, WA) lives and works in New York, NY. Waymire’s work is fueled by memories of power grids, combining “what does not belong.” They hold a BFA from New York University and were a recipient of the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship in 2023. Waymire has exhibited at 81 Leonard Gallery, 80 Washington Square East, and Governor’s Island WetLabs in New York, NY.
