Microscope Gallery at NADA NEW YORK 2023
NADA New York, Booth 3.04
Works by Ayanna Dozier, Tenzin Phuntsog, Ezra Wube
May 18 - 21, 2023
548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10001

VIP Preview:
Thursday, May 18, 10:00am – 4:00pm
General Public:
Thursday, May 18, 4:00pm – 8:00pm
Friday, May 19, 11:00am–7:00pm
Saturday, May 20, 11:00am–7:00pm
Sunday, May 21, 11:00am–5:00pm

For NADA New York 2023, Microscope is pleased to present new and recent paintings, Polaroids, and video sculptures by Ezra Wube, Ayanna Dozier, and Tenzin Phuntsog respectively. The artists, whose works are often highly personal, overlap in their concern with and questioning of the way information is disseminated and received through the media, including through news, commercials, films, social media and phone apps.

In selections from two series of paintings and painting installations by Ethiopian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Ezra Wube - which will debut at the fair - the artist contends with issues of displacement, the recent Tigray War, and the role of the news media in people’s perception and understanding of the conflict in his homeland. For example, in Wube’s new painting installations, imagery depicting human figures - who are each wearing masks representing one of the national animals of countries said to be involved in the conflict - as well as news headlines and other depictions of the war as portrayed in the media or posted on social sites are painted on common Ethiopian bed coverings. Exposed fabric creates the appearance of camouflaged uniforms, but are revealed to be the colorful patterned cotton covers upon which the artist says “millions literally dream every night.” The painted fabrics are stretched and then attached to bed frames that stand upright against a wall, making their undersides also viewable when seen from other angles.

A selection of Polaroids from two recent, never-before-exhibited photographic series by Ayanna Dozier find the artist recreating famous scenes from a commercial and a film from a black femme perspective. In the series “A Picture for Parco," shot on Polaroid stock with black borders, Dozier recreates a 1980s commercial made by the Japanese film director Kazumi Kurigami, for the department store chain Parco, in which Fay Dunaway is the sole actor and her only action is slowing peeling and eating a hard-boiled egg. Nuanced and complex emotions are displayed in Dozier’s interpretations. In “lovertits,” a series inspired in part by Charles Matton’s French erotica film, “Spermula," Dozier assumes the role of a young woman who enters a love motel to re-train her emotions about love and sex. Dozier says: “The result is a melancholic embracing of superficial happiness, femininity, and passiveness that she ultimately fails at achieving.”

Tenzin Phuntsog deals with issues of autonomy, displacement, and border control in several new works from a 2022-23 series of sculptural videos. Short videos displayed on screens set within small custom brass and jade boxes, are composed from footage of daily life that was shared over the WeChat phone app between the artist’s relatives in the US and those who live in Tibet — such as a farmer herding yaks, or a brightly colored Buddha Gif —  allowing mediated access to the autonomous region, which is under Chinese rule. The series was prompted by the 2020 ban of WeChat in the US, which effectively prevented the artist and his family — who are prohibited by the Chinese government from visiting the region — from communicating with their relatives during that time and until the app’s reinstatement in August of 2021.

For further information about the works on view please contact the gallery at [email protected]
 
Ayanna Dozier (b. 1990, Riverside CA) is an artist working primarily with analog film and film photography. In her work, she frequently looks at the lives of sex workers, erased histories, medical injustice, and sexual justice to make images for those underrecognized narratives across time. Her work does not represent unspeakable acts, but rather creates an emotive and embodied response to these systems of injustice through formal and narrative experimentation. Her work has been exhibited at The Shed, New York, NY; Fragment Gallery, New York, NY; Westbeth Gallery, New York, NY; BRIC Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCa) Arlington, VA; and the Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL amongst others. Her work has been reviewed in "The New York Times,”  “The Washington Post,” and “Hyperallergic,” and others. She was a 2022 Wave Hill Winter Workspace Resident, a 2022 Field Residency at Field Projects, a 2018-2019 Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies at the Whitney Independent Studies Program, and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow from 2017-2022 at Whitney Museum of American Art. She received a MA from New York University (NYU) and a PhD from Mcgill University. Ayanna Dozier lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Dozier’s first solo exhibition at the gallery took place this February/March and was reviewed in The New York Times and received an Artforum “Must See.”

Tenzin Phuntsog is a Tibetan-American artist living between San Francisco and New York and working with the mediums of film, installation, multi-media, and performance. His works have previously exhibited and screened at The Rubin Museum, New York; Anthology Film Archives, New York; The Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Galerie Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil; Video Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil; Rotterdam Film Festival (IFFR), Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and most recently at silent green as part of the 2023 Forum Expanded section of Berlinale in Berlin, Germany. Upcoming institutional exhibitions include the Seoul Mediacity Biennale in the Fall of 2023. Recent Fellowships and residencies include a Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art fellowship and residency (upcoming 2023), Marble House residency (2022), NARS Residency (2021), and a Flaherty Fellowship (2019).

Tenzin Phuntsog received a BA in Media Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in New York.

Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) is an Ethiopian-American artist whose works frequently reference the notions of past and present, the constant changing of place, and the dialogical tensions between “here” and “there.” His 2nd solo exhibition at Microscope is scheduled for early 2024. Previous solo exhibits including at The Africa Center, New York, NY; The High Line, New York, NY; The Fulton Street Transit Center (MTA), New York, NY; Time Square Arts Midnight Moment, New York, NY; Museum of Moving Image, Queens, NY; Oakland International Airport, Oakland, CA; Addis Atelier, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Latvia, among others.

His work has also been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Rush Art, New York, NY; Ethan Cohen Gallery, Beacon, NY; MassArt Art Museum, Boston, MA (upcoming Summer 2023); “Gwangju Biennale”, Gwangju, South Korea; Videobrasil, Sao Paulo Brazil; and the “Dak’Art Biennale”, Dakar, Senegal, among others.

Wube has received numerous grants, residencies and other awards including the Emerging Artist Grant Award, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York, NY; AIM Fellowship, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Van Lier Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Brooklyn, NY; “Open Sessions Program,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY; LMCC Residency Program, New York, NY; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Smack Mellon Studio Program, Brooklyn, NY; Triangle Arts Association Residency, Brooklyn, NY; The Substation Artist Residency Program, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and others.

He received his BFA in painting from Massachusetts Collage of Art in Boston, MA in 2004 and his MFA in Painting, Combined Media from Hunter College, New York, NY in 2009. Ezra Wube currently lives and and works in Brooklyn, New York.