Primary is proud to present Blank Space, a group exhibition featuring a selection of works from Srijon Chowdhury, Robert Crumb, Dustin Emory, David-Jeremiah, Graham Krenz, Elberto Muller, Angela Anh Nguyen, Luna Palazzolo-Daboul, Santiago Alexis Rubino, Paula Santomé, Philip Smith, & Wade Tullier. Opening Saturday, November 30, 2024, to coincide with Miami Art Week and will remain on view through January 18, 2025.
There are no words, at least not at this time.
No single phrase or polished narrative captures the nuance of this gathering. Here, a convergence of artists engage in quiet defiance of definition—together yet distinct, speaking not to the divisions around us, but to the shared experience that lies beneath.
This exhibition asks nothing of the viewer but presence. In a world saturated with clamour and certainty, we offer an invitation to dwell in the unspoken. In the quiet of these encounters, generations away from familiar narratives and prescriptive themes, ghosts, loitering in an abyss of the lingering.
Opens November 30, 2024 at 5 PM
About the Artists:
Srijon Chowdhury (b. 1987, Dhaka, Bangladesh) Lives and works in Portland, OR, where he and his wife Anna Margaret run the exhibition space Chicken Coop Contemporary. He holds a BFA from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN, and an MFA from the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA. He has been awarded grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, 2018; Regional Arts and Culture Council, 2018; Andy Warhol Foundation, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Calligram Foundation, 2017; and the Otis Governors Grant, 2012. In 2017, he was awarded the Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artists Fellowship. Chowdhury has presented solo exhibitions at Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Foxy Production, New York, NY; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; SE Cooper Contemporary, Portland, OR; CFA Live, Milan, Italy; Antoine Levi, Paris, France; and Ciaccia Levi, Paris, France; among others. His work has been included in group shows at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, CA; Foxy Production, New York, NY; Et al., San Francisco, CA; Franz Kaka, Toronto, Canada; Chapter NY, New York, NY; Deli Gallery, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; Nir Altman, Munich, Germany; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; among others. Chowdhury’s work was recently showcased in the 2024 Artists’ Biennial in Portland, OR. Concurrent with his co-curation of the Frye Art Museum’s group exhibition Door to the Atmosphere, the institution held Chowdhury’s first solo museum exhibition Same Old Song in 2022, coinciding with a publication of the same name.
R. Crumb (b. 1943, Philadephia, PA) moved to the dynamic Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco in 1967, and relocated in 1991 to the south of France, where he currently lives and works. Crumb joined David Zwirner in 2006. In 2016, Art & Beauty marked Crumb’s first solo presentation at David Zwirner, London. In 2017, David Zwirner, New York, featured an exhibition of the collaborative work of Aline Kominsky-Crumb and R. Crumb. Drawing for Print: Mind Fucks, Kultur Klashes, Pulp Fiction & Pulp Fact by the Illustrious R. Crumb, was presented at the gallery’s New York location in 2019. At David Zwirner, Paris, the exhibition R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Sophie Crumb: Sauve qui peut ! (Run for Your Life) was on view in 2022.
The artist’s 2010 show at David Zwirner, New York, The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis, presented 207 individual black-and-white drawings from his now landmark The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. Published by W.W. Norton in October 2009, the book chronicles all fifty chapters of Genesis in a tapestry of detail and storytelling, rendered frame by frame in meticulous comic-book fashion. The exhibition was previously on view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2009, before traveling to the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine; and San Jose Museum of Art, California. In 2013, it was presented as part of the 55th Venice Biennale, curated by Massimiliano Gioni.
Solo exhibitions of Crumb’s work were recently presented at the Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Mansfield (2020), and at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, California (2018).
In 2016, the Cartoonmuseum Basel organized Aline Kominsky-Crumb & Robert Crumb: Drawn Together, the first comprehensive museum presentation of the artists’ joint work. A retrospective of Crumb’s work was held in 2012 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In 2011, his work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators, New York. A major solo show devoted to Crumb’s work was organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, in 2007, and traveled from 2008 to 2009 to the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston; and the Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana, California. Other solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been organized by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, a show that traveled to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (both 2005); and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2004). Terry Zwigoff’s documentary Crumb was named the best film of 1994 by the late critic Gene Siskel and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995.
Work by the artist is represented in major museum collections worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles; Musée régional d'art contemporain Occitanie, Sérignan, France; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Dustin Emory (b. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia) is a self taught visual artist with a practice primarily consisting of painting. His work largely explores the human response to confinement through a black and white lens. He has exhibited nationally and internationally with group shows in New York and Paris, as well as recent solo exhibitions in London, Paris and Miami. In 2023, his work was chosen by Jenée-Daria Strand, the Assistant Curator at Public Art Fund, for the TD Bank Curated Spotlight during NADA Miami. His work can be found in the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA and is included in issue (166) of New American Paintings. Emory is represented by Primary.
David-Jeremiah (b. 1985, Oak Cliff, TX) works are included in the Dallas Museum of Art collection. A recipient of the Nasher Sculpture Center Artist Grant, David-Jeremiah was the subject of an early career survey at the Houston Museum of African American Culture in 2022 and a solo exhibition at the Clark Art Institute in 2024, accompanied by the artist’s first publication. David-Jeremiah is represented in Beth DeWoody’s The Bunker Collection, the Celíne Collection, New Bond Street in London, their upcoming China Project, as well as the Cash App Collection in Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Louis. David-Jeremiah has presented in numerous solo exhibitions spanning New York, The Hamptons, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, and Dallas. David-Jeremiah’s work has been recognized in print by The Brooklyn Rail, September 2024; Art in America, Fall 2024, “New Talent: 20 Artists to Watch.” by Christopher Blay, & Robert Wiesenberger for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Spring 2024. A major solo exhibition is slated for fall 2025 at MAMFW (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth).
Graham Krenz (b. 1986, Calgary, Canada) is a sculptor, who is working with wood as a primary medium and collaborator. His practice seeks to analyze the sensation of memory and the exaggerated way those moments present themselves when recalled. Since receiving his undergraduate degree in drawing from the University of the Arts, he has participated in group shows at Hawkins HQ, Collarworks, Galerie Nicolas Robert, Truck Gallery, and Untitled Art Society. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Visual Arts at the Mason Gross conservatory at Rutgers University.
Elberto Muller (b. 19??, California) three-dimensional mosaic tile works reference folktales, pop-iconography and pulp sub-cultures, capturing landscapes and vignettes with an overt playfulness in tone. Living mostly as a drifter, Muller’s work draws from his experiences riding freight trains, planes and autos across North America, crossing and recrossing the country through a covert network of rail and road maps, resources and guides maintained by fellow traveler’s. The myriad of faces, characters and stories told in his work brings the viewer into a world, an underground, to witness a disorienting reflection of a distorted culture. A humorous disenchantment with the ‘narcotic state of contemporary humanity’ and its diversions.
In addition to Muller’s studio practice, he recently published ’Graffiti On Low or No Dollars: An Alternative Guide to Aesthetics and Grifting Throughout the United States and Canada’ with Outlandish Press in August, 2023. In the course of his travels he has scattered hundreds of small mosaic tile works across the continent, which have become landmarks frequently sought out and documented by his avid followers.
Angela Anh Nguyen (b. 1995, Anaheim, CA) is a Los Angeles-based fiber artist whose work satirizes the mayhem of America’s culture wars. Working primarily in gun-tufted textiles, her pieces are a tongue-in-cheek ode to the convoluted rhythm of life, often exaggerated and never serious on the surface. She received a M.F.A. from the University of Southern California and M.A. from California State University Los Angeles and a B.A., University of California Los Angeles.
Angela Anh Nguyen’s work defies the boundaries between craft and fine art, using tufting—a traditionally functional medium—to engage in sharp cultural critique. Originally from a DIY, self-taught background, Nguyen’s journey into tufting began as a simple hobby and transformed into a profound artistic practice. Her work honors the laborers of this skilled trade while infusing it with narratives that explore contemporary cultural and political issues, questioning the complex relationships between art, labor, and materiality.
Nguyen’s use of materials, including sustainable and second-hand yarns, reflects her commitment to both the craft and the ethics of making art in a time of economic uncertainty. Her work resides in a liminal space between the commercial and the conceptual; as coexisting art objects and functional rugs, her pieces invite physical interaction and challenge traditional perceptions of gallery art. Her recent collaboration with Nepenthes exemplifies this duality, presenting textiles both as art and commercial product in a layered commentary on the intersections of fashion, craft, and fine art.
Her work has been included in exhibitions at Schmidt Center FAU, Boca Raton, FL, Good Mother, Los Angeles, CA, Albertsbenda, Los Angeles, CA, Carlye Packer, Los Angeles, CA, the Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA, and GAVLAK Gallery, Palm Beach, FL. and has been reviewed by Elephant Magazine, LA Times Image, Office Magazine, Re-edition Magazine, and Juxtapoz.
Luna Palazzolo-Daboul (B. 1991, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice resonates with the layered identity shaped by her Middle Eastern and Italian heritage and her later migration to Miami, Florida.
Deeply engaged in the intersections of psychology, materiality, and community, Luna's self-taught journey bridges a formal study of psychology from Kennedy University in Buenos Aires with her hands-on experience in restoration and fabrication, crafting a nuanced approach to art that is both intensely personal and socially incisive.
Her work is rooted in an iconoclastic vision, dissecting themes of empowerment, resistance, and the encroaching presence of technology on the human condition. Exhibiting across diverse locales—from Buenos Aires to Japan, Canada, Mexico, and the United States—Luna weaves together a critical discourse on the pressures of a technocratic society.
As co-founder of Tunnel Projects, an artist-led initiative, Luna extends her commitment to fostering spaces beyond conventional institutions. Located in an evocative 1980s shopping plaza in Little Havana, Tunnel Projects is a 250-square-foot underground exhibition space, accompanied by a dozen artist studios managed under the same ethos. Tunnel is dedicated to challenging the boundaries of art and offering artists alternative avenues for exposure and expression.
Santiago Alexis Rubino (b. 1979, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a self-taught, Miami-based visual artist known for his intricate drawings, characterized by fine draftsmanship and geometric precision. Drawing has long been the core of his practice, providing a foundation for his exploration of themes like growth, curiosity, and the complexities of life.
Recently, Rubino has expanded into oil painting, adding new dimensions of light, depth, and color to his work. His oil paintings mark a new chapter in his artistic journey, bringing a sense of wonder and storytelling to life through vivid, atmospheric scenes.
Rubino has exhibited internationally, with notable solo shows at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles, and Spinello Projects in Miami. His work has been showcased in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Mexico City, Toronto, and Miami, gaining recognition for its distinct visual language and evocative storytelling.
Paula Santomé (b. Spain, 1994) lives and works in Basel, CH. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Pontevedra, University of Vigo, ES (2018) and a Masters in Fine Art from Institut Kunst, HGK FHNW, Basel, CH (2022). Awards include: Finalist, Kiefer Hablitzel Göhner Kunstpreis, CH (2023) and First Prize, Contemporary Art Award of the Instituto Dental Campos, Vigo, ES (2018).
She has exhibitions internationally at galleries and institutions including: Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal, CH; Kunsthalle Basel, CH; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, CH; Museum of Pontevedra, ES; MAC Museum of Contemporary Art, A Coruña, ES; Kiefer Hablitzel Stiftung, CH; Basel Social Club 2023,CH; Palazzina, Allschwil, CH; Giulietta, Basel, CH; Oreilles Internaxionales, Basel, CH; Kaiserwache, Freiburg, DE; Pilz Welle Lust, Basel, CH; Atelierhaus Klingental, Basel, CH; ESDIR, La Rioja, ES; CasaDecor, Madrid, ES; Greylight Projects, Brussels, BE. 'Concerto Finale' at Regionale 24, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, CH, and 'Touch and Fire' at Regionale 24, Kunst Raum Riehen, CH, and a group show (curated by Chus Martinez) at Galeria Belmonte, Barcelona, ES
Residencies include GGG Atelierhaus, Basel, CH (2024) and the International Summer Academy of Salzburg, AT (2021).
Philip Smith (b. 1952, Miami, FL) is a foundational figure of The Pictures Generation, a group whose influence transformed the visual art landscape. His inclusion in the pivotal Pictures exhibition in 1977, curated by Douglas Crimp, alongside artists Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Longo, cemented his role in a movement that redefined the lens through which we see art. With later additions like Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Laurie Simmons, The Pictures Generation introduced a new paradigm of image, meaning, and narrative in art.
Smith's journey reflects an artist whose work bridges storytelling and visual expression. After relocating from Miami to New York, he initially wrote for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and later became managing editor of GQ, grounding himself in the layered craft of narrative. His memoir, Walking Through Walls (Simon and Schuster), chronicles an extraordinary childhood shaped by a father who discovered supernatural abilities, a surreal backdrop that reverberates through Smith’s art with a sense of mystique and introspection.
Smith’s work has been honored in exhibitions worldwide, including the Whitney and Beijing Biennials, and resides in a host of esteemed collections. These include the Whitney Museum of American Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Dallas Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Milwaukee Museum of Contemporary Art, Harn Museum of Art, Bard College, Norton Museum of Art, Bass Museum of Art, Morgan Stanley, and the New York Public Library.
In his work, Smith marries personal history with broader themes of perception, memory, and identity, consistently challenging viewers to reexamine the narrative potential of images. Through a career that defies conventional boundaries, Philip Smith remains an artist deeply committed to the evolving language of contemporary art.
Wade Tullier (b.1988, Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a visual artist working primarily in ceramics and sculpture. His work and process are heavily influenced by storytelling and being raised within the landscape of southern Louisiana.
Tullier holds a BFA from Louisiana State University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent shows in Miami, Chicago, and Detroit. His work is included in ‘With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932’ at the Cranbrook Art Museum and is included in ‘Clay Pop’ at Jeffrey Deitch New York. Cranbrook Art Museum, Detroit, MI, The Progressive Art Collection, Jorge M. Pérez Collection, John Marques Art Collection, Miami, The Bunker Art Space, Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, West Palm Beach, FL. Tullier is represented by Primary.
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Primary. (Est. in 2007) is a context & research-driven curatorial collective with a focus on public arts. Located in Little River, Miami, our private residence explores modern ideas on the subject of live/work, connecting new voices in contemporary art with growing audiences & collections.
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