UNIT 1 presents:
Woody Othello: “It’s Going To
Be Okay”
Open reception: 7:00pm-1:00am January 24, 2014
Lake Worth
exhibition space UNIT 1 is pleased to announce: “It’s Going To Be Okay”, the premiere solo exhibition of rising talent Woody Othello. Othello, a Lake Worth
based artist and FAU graduate creates installations of paintings, sculptures
and every day objects that are both disturbing and banal. “It’s Going To Be Okay” is a site-specific installation at UNIT1
exhibitions that Othello will create to reflect, on psychic entropy and its
effects on the physical self. Using technology as a metaphor for psychic
interferences, the work extends Othello’s ongoing efforts to examine negative
external stimuli and their harm to the individual.
Othello has
recently risen to popular attention in a string of strong showings at several
group exhibitions over the past year-most notably in the Monstrous Strange exhibition at Fat Village Projects and Southern Exposure at the Palm Beach
Cultural Council. As an Artist in Residence at the Armory Center for the Arts
on West Palm Beach, Othello has spent the past several months preparing for the
show by creating ever more strange and curious characters to inhabit his
artistic odditorium. Lovingly crafted in ceramics and then clothed and
positioned in appropriately banal interior spaces complete with wall
decorations and flickering televisions, Othello’s misfit children bring to mind
the psychoplasmic offspring of David Cronenberg’s 1979 film “The Brood”. Although
the grotesque humanoids Othello gives birth to often appear to be festering and
diseased, they somehow inspire a strange affection in the viewer. Perhaps it is
by isolating and then giving form to his own psychic afflictions that Othello
has provided an avenue for us all to instigate a similarly cathartic release.
Folk custom has long been inhabited by similarly revolting gargoyles or medusa
heads that in actuality serve as good luck objects to ward off evil. Othello
himself, in my subjective analysis, is curiously lacking the visible neurosis
one associates with young artists, and so it might be true that by isolating
and then exorcising the demons that afflict us all, he has in fact invented a
type of idiosyncratic therapy that does actually get results. Regardless, this
much anticipated show is sure to be a hit with the local art community and
hopefully will calm the psychic storm that has been generating all these bad
vibes the last few months.
Director UNIT1 exhibitions
The
show will also feature musical performances by WASHA and Boy Orbison.
WASHA, the moniker of Fort Lauderdale musician Dwight Pendleton, recently released a four song EP,
“The Bright, Part 1”. Produced by local mastermind David Barnard (Celebrator,
Sweet Bronco) the album shimmers with dreamy and ethereal song-scapes that
sound like they were recorded in a cathedral. Layering Pendleton’s choirboy
voice above spare guitar riffs drenched in reverb and then infusing additional
atmospherics recalling Tim Hecker and Aix Em Klemm, Pendleton and Barnard have
created a sublimely beautiful collection of songs.
Boy Orbison, a David Lynch inspired side project
from the band in Heaven
mastermind Ates Isildak
will be performing their first live set. Although they’ve released very little
material as of yet, expect dreamy and psychedelic nostalgia from this
noire-lounge duo.
The
show is being curated by Don Fils, Unit 1 Assistant Curator.
UNIT 1 is
an exhibition space and independent media production company founded by Jacques
de Beaufort. The gallery showcases artists in all media working in challenging
forms that exist somewhere near the EDGE or beyond it. The space also hosts special events,
film screenings, performances, and happenings driven by UNIT 1 participants and
friends.
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