Praying On The Name

Kingfish Gallery is proud to present its inaugural exhibition, Praying On The Name featuring Azza El Siddique, Alex Jackson, Amaryllis de Jesus Moleski, Emile Mausner, Julia Rooney, Gerald Sheffield, and Maya Strauss. Praying on the Name examines how the current moment has necessitated new ways of communication, with letter writing as an anachronistic mode of address. Using snail mail as a communicative device, each artist mailed in a crafted talisman or an object providing luck, magic, and protection. The act of "praying on the name" is a practice of folk medicine—a traiteur (French for treater) prays on the name of someone who is not physically present, in order to heal them from afar—keeping someone in your mind while they are not physically near, and wishing them well. Our individual self-exiling has provided, hopefully, insights on process and the importance of our relationships with mentors, friends, and peers.

Kingfish Gallery is a project space co-founded and operated by architect Adam Thibodeaux and artist Jacob Todd Broussard. Founded in 2020, Kingfish is located in their North Park home in Buffalo, NY. Supported in part by the Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art.

Alex Jackson folds the sense of smell into Heirloom for Breakfast and Treasure Hunting by rubbing each face of a familial Gulden coin with different perfumes belonging to each of his parents. The worn down heirloom has its own mythology of inheritance while it emits a mixed fragrance that one immediately experiences upon entering the space. Alex’s universe consists of gridded beings and gaseous floating eyes, all in service of his larger narrative mythology. Central to his work is the corporeal, of how one exists within a body, occupying the internal landscapes of perception, sense, and touch.

Amaryllis deJesus Moleski is also interested in storytelling. In service of her characters, her work engineers liminal space reaching fantastical, flamboyant dimensions. Her installations utilize materials that examine classed objects, decadence, and utopic visions. With Ceiling Scratcher (appeasing the ghost), a clawed hand turns to sequins which then turns to bone as light refracts from this phantom limb. A spectral hue bounces from wall to ceiling, as a hair extension provides a warm color gradient.

Emile Mausner makes painterly objects or personal relics examining the private self made public. Fantasy and desire are tethered to the ornamental boudoir of the bedroom, reflecting and refracting the manifestation of personhood through pop culture, literature, and trash. She selects these specific amulets with a fine-toothed comb and teases out their ghosts. Emile directly samples Nietzsche’s philosophical text in Human, All Too Human, crafting her own object of aspirational and tragic freedom—a prop imitating the secret it claims to hold.

Azza El Siddique employs the symbol of the ouroboros in All that which is and all this is not. Ideas of absence and presence serve as conceptual and formal devices within her practice. In her installations, Azza alters material from one state to another; mist fills a room, water becomes transported, smell holds conceptual dimensions. Steel frameworks carve out space for sacred contemplation. In All that which is and all this is not, the ancient Egyptian symbol of the ouroboros is made into an object through galvanized metal while signifying the beginning and end of time.

Julia Rooney makes abstract paintings that also examine how materials change over time. Newspapers are transformed into pulp which then become surfaces for gestures. Her paintings work inside and outside of the two dimensional and address the objectness of images through their installation. Waiting Game (01) consists of gouache paintings on domino pieces embedded within a course surface. Touch seems vital—each domino is painted with a level of care while the pulpy surface alludes to a decomposing wall. One can almost feel the weight of each enamel piece in their hand, dragging one’s vision across its gritty border—the eye becomes palm.

Gerald Sheffield II works in painting and installation to examine ideas of recognition, boundaries, borders, and artifacts. An anthropological approach yields new understandings of how one conceptualizes an artistic practice, working between pictorial image and physical objects. Gerald’s work is interested in a representational discourse, pushing back against homogenized Western conceptions of architecture, design, and figurative painting. With albatross, the head of a much-used paintbrush leans against a wall while balancing on a purple screw. The painter’s traditional tool for formalizing subjectivity is suddenly made into the subject.

Maya Strauss utilizes sympathetic magic to inform her sculptures and paintings. Memory ware becomes thematic in Memory Jug 2020 with various trinkets (bobby pins, buttons, keys, and coins) embedded within the surface of a bottle. The jug alludes to a specific time, perhaps this past year, with various words painted between its objects–words like SYMPATHETIC, MIMETIC, AGNES, REST. Maya’s work is interested in the handmade, with gesture emphasizing the deeply felt and substrate absorbing its impact. How can we put the felt back into the object/image? 

With each of these talismans, Praying on the Name conjures a collective definition of what protection, luck, and magic look like in our contemporary world.