WICKERHAM & LOMAX
American Pest
October 19 – November 23, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
KDR is delighted to present “American Pest,” a solo exhibition of new works by Wickerham & Lomax, the collaborative name of Baltimore-based artists Daniel Wickerham (b.1986) and Malcolm Lomax (b.1986). This marks the duo’s first with the gallery and will be on view from October 18th to November 23rd, 2024.
‘American Pest’ is the duo’s first solo exhibition in the wake of a global pandemic that forever altered the worlds that we inhabit. It is the duo's most extravagant, excessive, and abundant presentation of new work yet. It is also the pair's most abstract exhibition; the process and the making will take their final form in the gallery in the installation, with the viewer, the atmosphere comprising ‘American Pest.’
‘American Pest’ features over 400 new works by the collaborative duo that has been making art for over a decade. Embedded in their practice, it’s crux is connection – and the space of possibility in dislocation, reconnection, reconvening, recalibration, and regeneration.
Over 400 objects, aesthetic pests, and aberrations, 400 representations of the self, 400 representations of the soul, 400 longings, 400 yearnings, 400 missed calls, 400 deleted text messages, 400 tears, 400 reflections, 400 exclamation points, 400 wishes, 400 cigarettes butts, 400 drawings, 400 spaces for you to pause and reflect and understand that as long as you have breathe you can keep going, 400 tributes, 400 glitches, 400 cash app requests, 400 marks made by two artists who are translating the divine for the domestic audience.
Hauntology was introduced by Jacques Derrida in "Spectres of Marx" and is a concept whose ultimate concern is to decide how our present is affected by "dead" or "canceled futures."
Those missed calls, those conversations that we should have had that we didn't, those expectations that we set for ourselves that fail, the hopes of sobriety, the winning of life. We hope to ignore these things as we move through our daily lives, but our subconscious holds on to them, and like grief, it erupts in a rupture, not unlike the emergence of the lanternfly and the cicadas in Maryland. Not unlike the issue you had with your ex that you tried to ignore but came up in an argument, and you just can't let it go.
The duo’s sacrifice, dignified and absolving, is a testament to their commitment to their process and their art. It is a gift to themselves, their collaborators, their audience, and everyone who engages with their body of work.
Aberrations of character, like the marginalized folks who frequented third spaces in Baltimore City, the after-hours, the sub-basement bar, the church basement, the warehouse party, but in all of those moments, you find people who make you feel like you are not abhorrent. Maybe you just hadn’t found a community of people who also deviated from the norm. A group of folks who reflected you back to you.
The invasion of the spotted lanterfly in Maryland serves as a metaphor in the exhibition, symbolizing the disruptive and destructive forces that we often encounter in our lives – but those forces are also impetus for transformation, and renewal, and love.
We must marvel at the amount of focus, dedication, and refraction required to construct 400 objects, to encase worlds, feelings, bugs, and cigarettes in resin or epoxy, to entrap them and elevate them in love, metaphor, and hope. These objects are containers for the future, a time capsule that must outlive us all, these trophies of our age.
Man's hubris that we can stop God's will is laughable.
‘American Pest’ is a cacophonous creative symbiosis, a new exhibition birthed from the Wickerham & Lomax Laboratory, bridging two studios and two worlds to let the light in for the rest of us.
Allow yourself to be affected by these aesthetic aberrations, for they mark the dawn of a new age.
Text by Teri Henderson
Image courtesy of Wickerham & Lomax.
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Wickerham & Lomax is the collaborative name of Baltimore-based artists Daniel Wickerham (b. Columbus, Ohio, 1986) and Malcolm Lomax (b. Abbeville, South Carolina, 1986). Their practice is based on the accelerated exchange of frivolous information, gossip, and codified language that crystallizes into accessible forms in hopes of giving dignity to that exchange.
Since 2009, they’ve utilized digital imagery, sculpture, CGI, video and the web –– to work across diverse media, curatorial platforms, and institutional contexts. The work presents questions of identity and the body, focused on the impact of digital technologies and social spaces on the formation of subjectivities and speculative corporealities. The collaborative has created an approach that allows components of their projects to work through a networked sensibility. More recently, exhibitions have evolved to function as containers of swarm-like indexes, with each sign forming covalent bonds with those around it.
Recent exhibitions by Wickerham & Lomax include Domestic QT & The Spatial Anomalies at von ammon co, Washington, DC (2020–21); The Writers Room at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD (2018); DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know If You Belong, commissioned by Neighborhood Lights, Light City, Baltimore (2017); Uncool at Terrault Contemporary, Baltimore (2016); Take Karaoke: A Proposition for Performance Art at Brown University, Providence, RI (2015); the Sondheim Prize Finalist Exhibition, Baltimore (2015); Girth Proof at Dem Passwords, Los Angeles (2015); the premiere of Encore in the AFTALYFE at the Artists Space booth, Frieze NY 2014; and BOY’Dega: Edited4Syndication for New Museum’s First Look series; DUOX4Larkin, Artists Space, New York (2012).
Teri Henderson (b. Fort Worth, TX, 1990) is a Baltimore-based independent curator, Baltimore Beats & Arts and Culture Editor, and the author of Black Collagists: The Book. She is a contributing writer for Plastikcomb Magazine, and her writing has appeared in numerous publications including the Washington Post, Artforum, BmoreArt, Justsmile Magazine, Kinfolk Travel, and the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture.
For Images and information, please contact Lauren@kdr305.com
Image courtesy of the artists and Rodrigo Gaya.
