NEW YORK, NY.- Freight+Volume is presenting today The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, a group exhibition featuring works by Will Watson, Mary DeVincentis, Ezra Johnson, Natalie Westbrook, Karen Finley, and Madalena Pequito.

Alluding to Traffic's 1971 hit track, The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys captures the full gamut of ethical uncertainty—from laissez-faire fun in the sun to words as weapons of protest. Recasting the miasmic, tobacco-infused atmosphere of the song’s lyrics “Don't worry too much, it'll happen to you” to be more mindful of the various social grievances that surround us on all sides, The Low Spark of High- Heeled Boys unpacks like a cautionary tale about the use and abuse of pretenses to social conscience.

Each of the six artists on view has an individuated stance on the relationship between users and suppliers: the unending push and pull whose frictive echoes resound throughout our contemporary life. But instead of reveling in the details of the generic miasma environing us, they collectively give voice to an image of freedom that refuses any complicity with nostalgia. We’re never more free than when there’s a poignant distance between media and reality; and when neighborhoods, by design, overflow the locations pinned to Google maps. Across the works on view, these artists remind us that our everyday life is not confined to the various horrors portrayed by the news, but partake in an elegant form of play—disruptive, sensual, panoramic, concrete.

The works of Mary DeVincentis illustrate the freewheeling development of consciousness, something climate-savvy and adventurous. Similarly, the spatial integrity, the toying with gaps and recesses which runs through Natalie Westbrook’s work leans into a utopian vision where consciousness is equally composed of holes, yet ebulliently overflows. The works of Madalena Pequito and Ezra Johnson revel in the measured excess of those privileged moments when we feel absolutely free. For his part, Will Watson's paintings depict epic summer vibes in urban settings where people can still experience conviviality and delight in each other's company. His paintings find their counterpoint in the work of Karen Finley, who reminds us that power cuts into even our most radical affirmations of creativity and freedom.

The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys alludes to a sense of frustration that attends nostalgia; at the same time, it offers a revivified sense of wonder at the potentials still within our grasp, and which can only be realized now. From the visionary and developmental, to the minimalist and raw, what counts for most across this exhibition is the glorification of play and joy. Within the freewheeling environment of an artist's conscience, there's a radiant center that brims with the potential of multiple timelines.

Throughout The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, this spirit of generous effort transforms into universal statements about what it means to be alive in the world today.

Painter Mary DeVincentis employs a deeply personal iconography to investigate the dilemmas and mysteries of existence. Her paintings depict people, animals and elements of nature as equal in significance and numinosity. Her September 2022 solo exhibition Walking with Ghosts at Tappeto Volante Projects was inspired by the 12th century Persian poem The Conference of the Birds and was reviewed in the January 2023 edition of Art Forum. Previous NYC solo exhibits include Alone in This Together at M. David and Co, Out There, also at M. David and Co and Dwellers on the Threshold at David & Schweitzer Contemporary. Ongoing series include Dark Matters, paintings which investigate the shadowy side of human experience and Sin Eaters, works which depict society's saints, martyrs, scapegoats and outcasts. DeVincentis earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Maryland Institute College of Art and was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Printmaking from St. Martin’s College of Art in London, UK. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in many public and private collections. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Born in Chicago, Karen Finley received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Working in a variety of mediums such as installation, video, performance, public art, visual art, entertainment, television and film, memorials, music, and literature, she has presented her work worldwide in various venues such as The Bobino in Paris, The ICA in London and Lincoln Center in NYC.Her work is in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary art and the Pompidou, and she is the recipient of many awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, NYSCA and NEA fellowships. In 2015 she was awarded the Richard J Massey Foundation Arts and Humanities award. She is an Arts Professor in Art and Public Policy at New York University. Karen Finley
Lives and works in New York, NY.

Ezra Johnson is a painter and animator based in Florida and London. He was born in 1975 in Wenatchee, Washington and received a MFA from Hunter College in New York in 2006. He has exhibited his work at many prestigious venues such as the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Site Santa Fe Biennial, and the ICA in Philadelphia, as well as at galleries nationally and internationally. His work is currently feautured in the show “Domestic Seen” at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas, opening on October 20th, 2016 and running through March 26th, 2017.

Madalena Pequito was born in Lisbon, in 1996. She lives and works in Lisboa. Madalena is driven by her great passion for the arts, and for that reason everything she does revolves arround that. Madalena studied Scenography and Costumes at António Arroio Art School, graduated in Painting at Lisbon Faculty of Fine Art in 2018, and completed a Masters degree in Arts and Cultural Enterprise at Central Saint Martins, in London, in 2021. Between 2017 and 2018, Madalena did an exchange program in Budapest Hungary, at the Magyar Képzomuveszeti Egyetem (Hungarian University of Fine Art). During these months, she integrated with the local community of artists, participating in exhibitions, lectures, and site-specific installations. Throughout her career, the artist sought to integrate different projects and promote dialogue with other artists. She was a residency artist for 4 years at Nucleo A70, a cultural organization, which allowed her to contact with other artists in their creative process. Currently, she is a resident at Casa Dona Laura, another shared studio space with other artists. She is also part of a collective called Vês.Três. Because she values collaboration, Madalena has co-created pieces for clothing brands such as AwayToMars and Esticca. She is also part of a theatre independent group as a set designer and costume designer. Madalena has taken part in two International Biennials: Contextile Biennial, in Guimarães, in 2022, and ArtFem Macao Female art Biennial, in Macao, in 2018. She was a finalist in some art prize contests, such as the Young Creators Art Prize, Guarda’s International Art Prize, and Paula Rego art prize, and has received an Honorable Mention at Jovarte Biennial. Madalena has done more than 50 solo and group shows, since 2015. Even though painting is her main field of practice, Madalena also explores her writing and curatorial skills. Moreover, she is part of a dance group, in which she explores self-expression and movement through performance.

Will Watson (b. 1987) received his MFA in Painting from The Maryland Institute College of Art in the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting (2018) and his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Indiana University's Herron School of Art and Design (2011). He is a 2016-18 Leslie King Hammond Graduate Fellowship recipient and a Merit Grant recipient in 2016 and 2019. In 2022, he participated in the NADA House residency on Governor's Island, NY. His work has been exhibited at numerous galleries in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New England, including the Curtiss Jacobs Gallery in Harlem, NY, The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, Pepco Edison Place Gallery in Washington D.C., and Hunter Gallery in Middletown, RI. He lives and works in Baltimore, MD, and Brooklyn, NY.

Natalie Westbrook received her BFA from The Cooper Union, her MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of Louisville, and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale University School of Art where she received the Robert Schoelkopf Memorial Travel Grant, and the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Excellence in Painting. Westbrook has exhibited internationally, including shows with Rarity Gallery, Mykonos, Greece; Galleri Golsa, Oslo, Norway; Artformosa, Taipei City, Taiwan; Paris Contemporary Art Show, Paris, France; Robert Miller Gallery, New York, NY; CRUSH Curatorial, New York, NY; Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY; the B3 Biennial of the Moving Image in Frankfurt, Germany; and Wonzimer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. The artist’s work is held in private and public collections, including Markel Corporation, Red Bank, NJ; Capital One, Richmond, VA; and Art Bank Program, US Department of State, Washington, DC; and Haleakala National Park, Maui, HI. Westbrook was appointed Lecturer in Painting at Yale University 2010-2019, and currently teaches at Carnegie Mellon University where she lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. Things fall apart, release, break, separate, go to pieces, and abstract. The moment before it happens, they hold on gripping in low traction. My work inhabits the slippery spaces between form and dissolution, sensation and representation. This investigation occurs within the confines of a singular canvas, and across my practice as a whole. The malleability of paint naturally expresses the mutability and fragility of the human body. In the natural world, organic forms replicate, mutate and multiply. The proliferation of organisms presents a Baroque horror vacui of fecundity. We project and reflect our own bodies in the colors, patterns and shapes in the natural world. Similarly, I consider my paintings as mirrors for the viewer — like mirrors, my paintings acknowledge both a material surface for reflection and a deep pictorial illusion. The slippage between surface and perception elicits surreal discovery.

Freight+Volume
The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
July 22nd, 2023 - September 2nd, 2023