“Hi Jennifer,
I popped into your show today because the Friedman Benda show about Ettore Sottsass wasn't open. I met you as I was leaving and said that your show was "interesting." Blah.
In the spirit of my experience of your work, I'm writing you before I google your work to thank you for your show. By "chance," I entered into your space and your art and thoughts and I'm struck by the freshness of it all. Fresh in that it reminded me of something I didn't know I remembered--NYC (and other rich cities) before it became over-corportized, over-prescribed, over-polished, over-predictable. At first, I thought it must be a non-profit space--the person who opened the door was welcoming. On my ride home, I realized that I immediately started assigning labels to your work to make sense of what I was reading and seeing. But something so wonderful about your show is that it covers a lot of ground in that enormous, gorgeous space. And that gave me the opportunity to stop pigeonholing and to start taking it in. Unlike most young artists, you've been working for decades and have access to a huge space...so the show has a depth and emotion and history that most young artists don't, but without losing something I guess that I associate more with youth. Every word I come up with sounds cliched and loaded with unintended meaning--raw, unfiltered, dada, spontaneity, immediacy, authenticity, surprise--I don't know. And the despair and humor made me feel less alone on an existential level...dare I say, hopeful, even.
So thank you for sharing your work and space with me and provoking in me so many ideas and emotions and a sense of longing for being in the world differently from the usual. And a hopeless romantic hope for changing the course of our collective future instead of accepting this late-capitalist spectacle of shit.
I know that there is a lot more to say about your work and I know that this is sappy and naive and embarrassing, but fuck it. I'm hitting send and then I'll sign up for your newsletter.
Take care!”
— Dara Kiese
