Poetics of Relatability | Group Show - Noor Alsuwaidi, Noormah Jamal, Ilsa Jones, Alex McAdoo, and Pedro Troncoso - Exhibitions

Alex McAdoo

Rita at Point Dume, 2023

Oil on linen

30h x 24w in

“I want to see people who look like me.” One often hears this statement in the realms of contemporary cultural discourse. A part of this statement alludes to an interest in representation or being represented. However, with a proliferation of identities we now find it expands to “relating” to what someone in a still or moving image represents. She is not just a brown girl in a saree but the lighting in her bedroom seems to be what I’d go for! She’s so me! Relatability seems to be inspired by both cultural and consumer identities, mood and aura as well as a world of objects.

In academia, the question of “relatability” as an aesthetic category has received mixed opinions, many scholars worry that it interferes with the feat of critical thinking. Yet there are others fascinated by it. The author, Brian Galvey provides an interesting prompt, “The paradox of relatability makes us ask whether an aesthetic experience is transitive or intransitive, whether an encounter with a work of art is a relation primarily with otherness or with the self.”

The title of the show borrowed from an idea in Galvey’s paper ‘Having a Coke with you is Even More Fun than Ideology Critique.’ The word ‘contemporary’ means occurring at the same time. Contemporary art then fundamentally lends itself to questions of what it means to share the same time as an artist. The work in this show investigates “relatability” as an aesthetic category and its effects.

The artists in this exhibit bring to us an oeuvre of figurative visual art, images that are both distorted and usual. The distortions are created through unusual objects, playing with perspective often leading to surreal scenes. However, the works in this show hold a sense of familiarity, a contemporary visual language that is recognizable to the viewer. The figures and scenes– young people smoking, driving, urbanscapes & suburbanscapes, sunlit pavements and parking lots act as elements of relatability in the modern world. The overarching scenes and themes are nothing if not “unreal” in some sense, depicting fantastical and despotic perspectives, some more than others.

What is it then, object, subject or mood that inspires relatability? Is relatability an affect to be produced or a descriptive term? Does “relating to” to an artwork in the contemporary context, nudge us towards more complex questions of representation of race, class and gender?

Ilsa Jones

There’s a shit storm a ’comin, 2020

Acrylic on MDF

29h x 48w in

Noormah Jamal

We're never alone are we, 2023

Acrylic on linen

44h x 34w in

Noor Alsuwaidi’s (United Arab Emirates b. 1981) visual language escapes simple relatability but pushes the viewer to ask questions about the figures she beholds. What are they, who are they, are they people or body parts. Her intuitive use of color distinguishes her work.

Noormah Jamal (Pakistan, b. 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Peshawar, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She says, “At the core of my artistic practice lies a deep exploration of human nature and the profound influence of personal experiences that shape individuals. Heavy in symbolism, my artistic language delves into the unspoken emotions and untold stories that often go unnoticed or are silenced.”

Ilsa Jones’ (United States, b. 1997) work often depicts a first person perspective, exploring psychological spaces either during a moment of change, or a space of rest after change. Influenced by surrealist and religious imagery, the spaces she depicts often exist beyond immediate reality, embedded somewhere in the subconscious fusion of external influences. For Ilsa, painting is an evolutionary tool to understand cognitive patterns in the human psyche.

Alex McAdoo (United States, b. 1987) paints public spaces - some that seem urban, some more residential. His oil painting renders the world in skewed perspectives and hallucinatory visuals. McAdoo portrays the world around us all through an other-worldy lens. His work can at once be deemed inspired by the screen as an interface; while depicting the hand of the painter.

Pedro Troncoso (Dominican Republic, b. 1996) creates dreamscapes through larger than life figures. The cool blue and purple color schemes construct a sense of enigma while visualizing the dynamic between human and cyborgian subjects, creating a dialectic of consumption. The paintings depict them both consuming/ ingesting one another.