Deborah Bright
Alicia Gibson
Timothy Hull
Keith Mayerson
Clintel Steed

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery is pleased to present “So-Long, Bobby,” a group show featuring works by five artists in the front gallery at 87 Franklin Street.

In 1968, following Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the presidential candidate’s body was transported from New York to Washington, D.C. by train. Magnum photographer Paul Fusco captured an image of mourners along the train tracks holding a sign that read, “So-Long Bobby.” In 2021, artist Deborah Bright reimagined this sign as a “logo for the nation, a neon sign reminding us of what kind of country we once had the possibility of becoming.”

This show, taking its title from Bright’s work, brings together pieces that individually express admiration and a celebration of hopefulness in the face of loss, as Bright saw in Kennedy’s presidential run. Timothy Hull’s geometrically patterned paintings of shirts draw on the exuberance and energy of Gianni Versace’s designs from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hull points to Versace as a queer icon and celebrates the aspirational glamour of gayness in the artist’s youth. Keith Mayerson’s painting “Billie Jean King, Wimbledon, 1975” lovingly depicts the tennis champion at a crowning moment. King, beginning in the 1970s during a push for the Equal Rights Amendment, used her position to fight for women’s rights in sports and beyond, famously stating that “Pressure is a privilege.” Clintel Steed’s colored pencil drawing “Ode to Desmond Tutu” intimately captures the empathy of the anti-Apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Alicia Gibson’s “Die Yuppie Scum” conveys the outrage of political struggle through the playful, rebellious spirit of a teenager’s classroom doodles. Together, the works in the show perhaps point to a kind of mourning or grief for what could have been-a nostalgia for progress and a continued need for joyful fighters.