carriage trade
277 Grand St, 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10002
Thursday - Sunday, 1-6pm

Please Note:
We’re following the standard health protocols (masks, social distancing, etc.) and will limit attendance according to CDC guidelines (25% capacity). Appointments can be made via See Saw or by emailing us directly at carriagetradeny@gmail.com. If you’re nearby and want to know if there’s room in the gallery please feel free to call us at 646-863-3874.

 

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.
Euripides

Death don’t have no mercy.
Reverend Gary Davis

The logic of unnecessary suffering and death is guaranteed by the news. Before the pandemic, before the explicit brutality revealed by cell phone videos, violence has long been sublimated through media ritual. If it bled, it led. School shootings, police violence, environmental carnage, and “expected” casualties in low-income neighborhoods scroll across the screen in a flash, furnishing living rooms with wall to wall anxiety, explicitly evoking fearful responses that fuel a divisive politics.

With no chance to pause, no break in the breathless expression of conflict and reprisal, the citizen succumbs. Lacking rituals that permit assimilation of pain and loss, the media’s engine churns, denying us the specificity and details that might foster empathy over alienation. As government and the social order morph into a massive train wreck from which it’s impossible to look away, the now limitless terrain occupied by corporate and social media graft themselves over the last shreds of community interest, blanketing consciousness with ratings systems that stimulate competitiveness over comprehension.

Identifying with faithful cable networks and social media communities that confirm our beliefs by contrasting them with those of whom we’re encouraged to despise, the undeniable, universal nature of mortality becomes a divisive subject. In a system predicated on experience-as-commodity, this question of value extends to a life, with prices varying depending on where one falls in the social order. The “essential workers” are applauded as they fall, their pain understood most acutely by the communities within which the media rarely tread.

Death has a value that’s overshadowed by “life”, as life asserts values which deny death’s existence. A deadly virus rips through partisan divides, mocking the tribal fury which overshadows a mutual acknowledgment of a common plight. The economic divide looms underneath, as grotesque inequalities, unmatched in nearly a century, threaten to take their revenge.

Taking its title from Nuotama Bodomo’s 2016 film, Everybody Dies!, which features Tonya Pinkins as a fictitious public access TV host Ripa the (grim) Reaper who "teaches black kids about the day they’ll die”, this exhibition will explore the theme of death through social, political, and metaphysical perspectives.

We’d like to thank all the artists and the following lenders for their loans of artwork for the exhibition: The Museum of Modern Art, New York (Felix Gonzalez-Torres), Division Leap (Melchior Grossek), Getty Open Source (Dorothea Lange), Metro Pictures (Louise Lawler), Angel Abreu (Sherrie Levine), Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong (Jim Shaw), Winter Works on Paper (archival material) and Bob Dvonch (The Diggers).

Thanks also to Daylon Orr and gallery assistants Maya Fell, Laura Li, Hsiang-Hsi Lu, Veronika Molnar, and Hannah Park for their committed work on the show. A special thanks to Lawrence B. Benenson for his generous support.

 

 

Installation View

Everybody Dies! carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Dorothea Lange

Funeral Cortege, End of an Era in a Small Valley Town, California, 1938, Inkjet Print, 8 3/8” x 10”, Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Sherrie Levine

Black Mirror: 5 (part of the Mourning Mirrors series), 2004,
Mirrored glass in mahogany frame, 12 1/2” x 18 1/2”, Courtesy of Angel Abreu.

Archival Material

Antique “Mourning Prints” swatch pages from
a dressmaker’s book, circa 1870, 10 1/2” x 15 3/8”, Courtesy of Winter
Works on Paper.

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Archival Material

Digger poster, 1967, Courtesy of Bob Dvonch

Archival Material

Digger Ephemera, Courtesy of Bob Dvonch, photo: Nicholas Knight

John Schabel

November 22, 1963, 1963-2020, Pigmented ink print, 8.5” x 22 1/8”,
Courtesy of the artist.

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Louise Lawler, Civilian, 2010, Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, photo: Nicholas Knight

Louise Lawler

Civilian, 2010, Printed vinyl, 24” x 29 1/8”, Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures.

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Diane Nerwen

5/24/20, 2020, Inkjet print, 8” x 10 3/8”, Courtesy of the artist.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

“Untitled” (Death by Gun), 1990, Print on paper, endless copies,
Stack: 9” at ideal height x 44 15/16” x 32 15/16”, Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo: Nicholas Knight

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Detail: “Untitled” (Death by Gun), 1990, Print on paper, endless copies,
Stack: 9” at ideal height x 44 15/16” x 32 15/16”, Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Melchior Grossek

Grossek’s Dance of Death, 1923, Courtesy of Division Leap, photo: Nicholas Knight

Melchior Grossek

Grossek’s Dance of Death VII. Der Zeppelin (The Zeppelin), 1923,
Courtesy of Division Leap, photo: Nicholas Knight

Melchior Grossek

Grossek’s Dance of Death, III. Der Ausmarsch (The March Out), 1923,
11 1/4” x 7 1/8”, Courtesy of Division Leap.

Melchior Grossek

Grossek’s Dance of Death, IV. Die Feldherren (The Commanders), 1923, 8 3/4” x 7 15/16”, Courtesy of Division Leap.

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Everybody Dies! carriage trade
photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Bill Miller

Unlucky, 2016, Courtesy of the artist, photo: Nicholas Knight

Bill Miller

Unlucky, 2016, Video, 3 minutes 45 seconds, Courtesy of the artist.

Jim Shaw

The Third Angel, 2015, Courtesy of the artist and Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong, photo: Nicholas Knight

Installation View

Everybody Dies!, carriage trade, photo: Nicholas Knight

Nuotama Bodomo

Everybody Dies!, 2016, Video, 9 minutes, Courtesy of the artist, photo: Nicholas Knight

Nuotama Bodomo

Everybody Dies!, 2016, Video, 9 minutes, Courtesy of the artist, photo: Nicholas Knight