Sunshowers

2023 A.I.R. National Members Exhibition

GALLERY I, II, & III

June 30–July 30, 2023 Opening reception: Friday, June 30 from 5–7pm

Curated by Mira Dayal

Hend Al-Mansour, Diane Cionni, Nancy Daly, Robin Dintiman, Nicolei Buendia Gupit, Kathryn Hart, Nicole Havekost, Marlana Stoddard Hayes, Olga Hiiva, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Courtney Desiree Morris, Allison Paschke, Martha Sedgwick, Vicky Tomayko, Ellyn Weiss, Holly Wong, Joo Yeon Woo, Alice Pixley Young

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Sunshowers, a group exhibition curated by Mira Dayal that features work by eighteen A.I.R. National Artist Members: Hend Al-Mansour, Diane Cionni, Nancy Daly, Robin Dintiman, Nicolei Buendia Gupit, Kathryn Hart, Nicole Havekost, Marlana Stoddard Hayes, Olga Hiiva, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Courtney Desiree Morris, Allison Paschke, Martha Sedgwick, Vicky Tomayko, Ellyn Weiss, Holly Wong, Joo Yeon Woo, and Alice Pixley Young.

Flitting between figuration and abstraction, the works by the artists in Sunshowers suggest portals to an elsewhere or cross-sections of a here, whether a particular place or a body. These artists reflect on mixed conditions, layered histories and emotions. Several of their works have a ghostly presence enhanced by their visual ambiguity. Though they differ in approach—including process-based meditations on materials, conceptual gestures, and cultural critiques—many of the pieces mourn for or invite something lost, or grasp for something yet unattained or unattainable.

One gallery brings together a grouping of works that use repetition and patterning to conjure another presence or a larger idea. Somber in tone and palette, these works also present an opening: a mythical or mystical dimension. A related constellation of works moves further from abstraction into representation, more directly incorporating linguistic or figurative elements. Here the works are more vibrant in palette, as well as visually dense or emphatically collaged. They are specifically about layering; these artists are interested in how physical buildup over time can index a complex process or be a means of yielding or obscuring further meaning. 

In the second half of the exhibition, several artists explore means of relaying bodily experiences, specifically related to care and healing, which they approach from alternately earnest, remedial, insistent, and comical angles. This section brings together different modes of representation: some pieces are quite visceral, suggesting actual flesh and its manipulation, while others allude to the body through indexical traces. Legacies of violence, particularly as they shape landscapes and our relationships to them, thread through the final set of works on view. Here, water is represented as a source of harm, a tool for healing, and a realm of the unknown. Some works in this gallery are more abstract, without ties to a specific landscape or historical event. But they all evoke nature in distinct ways, and their meanings are complicated by the works that surround them.

Mira Dayal is an artist, writer, and editor based in Brooklyn. Her studio work is often site-specific and involves subtle but laborious applications of materials, critical reflections on changing technologies, and formal explorations of the limits of language. Her projects have been shown at Apparatus Projects, Artspace New Haven, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, OCHI, Hesse Flatow, Kunstverein Dresden, Gymnasium, Lubov, NURTUREart, NARS Foundation, Abrons Art Center, and other spaces. 

Dayal is the editor, with Josephine Heston, of Track changes: a handbook for art criticism, forthcoming from Paper Monument, and is the co-publisher of the collaborative artist publication prompt: and founder of the Journal of Art Criticism. She was previously Ideas Editor at Art in America and an associate editor and regular contributor at Artforum. Dayal is also a faculty member of the SVA MFA in Fine Arts, and has taught at Hunter College in the MFA in Fine Art as well as the International Center of Photography. 

View the Press Release here.

Recent Press: Valentina Di Liscia, Elaine Velie, Rhea Nayyar and Maya Pontone, “30 Art Shows to See in New York This Summer”, Hyperallergic, June 14, 2023, https://hyperallergic.com/827474/30-art-shows-to-see-in-new-york-summer-2023.

Photography: Sebastian Bach