Speak ill

Ask the flirtatious Gavin Butt, Silvia Federici the witch, or Balkan secret agent Julia Kristeva: gossip is valuable. Integral to cultural production, hearsay can be a corrosive or supportive force, depending on the words exchanged. The value of information and its dissemination holds alchemical potential.

There are some useful spells for thwarting gossip. Materials include candles, broken glass, twine, ice, ink, and the written word.

"Speak ill" includes artists Creighton Baxter, Travis Boyer, Cristine Brache, Nick Fusaro, Adrienne Greenblatt, Ellen Pong and Gitte Maria Möller. A listening area at the exhibition’s center houses a series of recorded programs that expand on examples of hearsay using artist-editioned Morningstar speakers by Emmett Palaima as a conduit. Programming includes artists Sophia Giovannitti, Erik Foss, Journey Streams, and more.

NICK FUSARO (b. 1989) is based in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA in Sculpture from Hunter College in 2022 and his BFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in 2012. His sculptural practice combines humble materials, collections, and iteration to emphasize the effects of memory on lived experience. Fusaro also studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2011 and is the founder of Three Four Three Four, an artist-run gallery in New York. He has shown at Parent Company Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Marwan (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Jupiter Woods (London, UK), Fisher Parrish (Brooklyn, NY), Strobe Gallery (New York, NY) and Long Story Short (New York, NY).

ADRIENNE GREENBLATT (b. 1995, Reading, UK) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and poet based in Brooklyn, NY. They hold a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Dance with a concentration in Costumes from the University of Texas at Austin (2017) and recently completed specialized training in various glass mediums at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn.

Adrienne’s practice is characterized by its multisensory nature and draws strong inspiration from alchemy, the body, metalworking, and esotericism. Using lampworking and kiln-forming techniques, they craft experimental glass forms that appear aqueous and frozen. Their Texan upbringing, mixed Salvadoran-Jewish heritage, and deep interest in the spiritual and natural realms—as well as a fascination with synesthesia, the human body, and illness—profoundly inform their creative work.

Adrienne Greenblatt has performed in spaces such as M. Leblanc in Chicago, KAJE in Brooklyn, Printed Matter St. Marks, Slip House, and Sara’s @ Dunkunsthalle in NYC. Their glasswork has been shown at Weatherproof’s The Hole in Chicago, IL; Espace Maurice in Montréal; Snow Gallery and The Sue Tear in Brooklyn; and Blade Study in NYC. Adrienne has also organized and curated off-site projects and exhibitions at spaces such as No Gallery and GernEnRegalia in NYC, as well as at the beach at Fort Tilden, NY.

Gitte Maria Möller (b. 1991, Cape Town, South Africa) is a painter, multi-disciplinary artist and pre-school teacher. She graduated with a BAFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2015, where she received the Judy Steinberg Painting Prize for her graduate show. She has exhibited locally in South Africa, as a well as internationally across Europe, the UK and the United States. She lives and works between Cape Town and New York City. Gitte uses a range of different mediums and painterly devices to explore the symbolic and numinous possibilities of picture-making. Drawing from dream symbology, early video games and the natural and urban landscape, Gitte’s work holds a complex array of signs, symbols, and archetypes in suspension. Through her work Gitte strives to form a union between her inner and outer reality, creating a personalized arena for devotion in her pictures. In this intricate visual space, she offers a distracted meditation on a world interpolated by empathy and apathy, freedom and vulnerability, and the struggle between g00d and 3vil.