More Coming back & More Returning

Marisa Takal, Throughout and with Power, 2020, pencil, watercolor and acrylic on board

Marisa Takal, A Cycle, 2020, pencil on paper

Morgan Canavan, Friday 9 December 2016, 18 February /19 February 2017, stainless steel with U.V. print

Morgan Canavan, Friday 9 December 2016, 18 February /19 February 2017, stainless steel with U.V. print

Morgan Canavan, Friday 9 December 2016, 18 February /19 February 2017, stainless steel with U.V. print

Ben Estes, CHICAGO BUTTERFLY CARVERS / QUAKER LANTERN MOONLIGHT DRAIN, 2023, acyrlic on paper

Ben Estes, BASHFUL ROMAN RUGBY BALLOONS / COTATI SNAPDRAGON PILLOW TRAILS, 2023, acyrlic on paper

Marisa Takal, Unborn Star 1, 2023, aluminum adhesive, paper, wire, packing tape on tea box

Marisa Takal, Unborn Star 1, 2023, aluminum adhesive, paper, wire, packing tape on tea box

Marisa Takal, My Path, Etc, 2023, fabric paint, paper, acrylic, pen, packing tape, masking tape, adhesive label on ak mak box

Marisa Takal, My Path, Etc, 2023, fabric paint, paper, acrylic, pen, packing tape, masking tape, adhesive label on ak mak box

Marisa Takal, A Journey A List A-List, 2023, acrylic, pen, paper, packing tape, adhesive label on coffee filter box

Marisa Takal, A Journey A List A-List, 2023, acrylic, pen, paper, packing tape, adhesive label on coffee filter box

Morgan Canavan, 27 February/ 28 February 2018, 2018, stainless steel with U.V. print

Morgan Canavan, 27 February/ 28 February 2018, 2018, stainless steel with U.V. print

Morgan Canavan, Weather Report [3], 2019, laser cut stainless steel with U.V. print

Ben Estes, BRUSSELS LARKSPUR NIGHTY EMPATHY, 2023, glazed ceramic earthenware

Ben Estes, GIVERNY FROG PAPER, 2023, glazed ceramic earthenware

Ben Estes, SHH SHH SHY SKY HELSINKI, 2023, glazed ceramic earthenware, installation view

Ben Estes, SHH SHH SHY SKY HELSINKI, 2023, glazed ceramic earthenware

More Coming Back & More Returning, installation view

More Coming Back & More Returning, installation view

More Coming Back & More Returning, installation view

More Coming Back & More Returning
Morgan Canavan, Ben Estes & Marisa Takal
May 5 - June 11, 2023

I spend a lot of time in used book stores, both as a way of uncovering new things to read and also as a practice of looking and holding. This is where I picked up the Bernadette Mayer Reader, from which the title of this show, More Coming Back & More Returning, is borrowed. Despite already having this book in my personal library, I was drawn to the handled and worn used copy. It’s a lengthy collection of Bernadette's poems, and admittedly one I had not parsed through in its entirety. Standing in the store, I opened it to the lone dog ear-ed page, a poem titled The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica.

..Look at very small things with your eyes

& stay warm

Nothing outside can cure you but everything's outside

There is great shame for the world in knowing

You may have gone this far

Perhaps this is why you love the presence of other people so much

Perhaps this is why you wait so impatiently

You have nothing more to teach

Until there is no more panic at the knowledge of your own real existence

& then only special childish laughter to be shown

& no more lies no more

Not to find you no

More coming back & more returning

Southern journey

Small things & not my own debris

Something to fight against

& we are all very fluent about ourselves..

Akin to the prior owner, I too am someone who commits the divisive act of dog ear-ing a book page. People hate to borrow books from me. I full-page right angle fold as a bookmark, and crease the tiniest corner on any page I might want to return to. This often adds up to at least twenty new folds in a single book– a once-slim novel becoming an accordion from the added volume of all of the folded pages. Some view this as causing irreparable damage to the objectness of a novel, forever shifting the readability of a text and condition of the book.

The work in More Coming Back & More Returning is embedded with language but not entirely about readability. The text in the work becomes a material to be collaged, folded, hidden and revealed. In Morgan Canavan’s sculptures, facsimile prints of newspapers are clipped out, intuitively collaged, and then printed on stainless steel. The content of the clippings vary– from Financial Times market data, the Renault Emissions investigation, an image of an Anthony Caro sculpture, two separate articles about weather manipulation to images of woman in wedding dresses– but in their repositioning and reprinting constitute a mental and physical shift in the density of the object. The sculptures are made in search of sets of meanings that are unresolve and porous. In Ben Estes’ paintings and ceramics, the literal meanings of words begin to fall away. Using spontaneously written phone lists as a starting place, language becomes an exercise in sound, rhythm and abstraction. Text is used as a material to be stamped on the surface of a painting & impressed in a clay body. Holes in the ceramic “drains” are both a metaphoric net to catch words in, but also a space for them to flow through. In this work, Estes considers how abstraction needs to be pulled from something specific– a face, a landscape, an ideograph– and suggests that words can be used similarly. In Marisa Takal’s drawings and collaged tea-box sculptures, the intersection of interior and exterior spaces– both in a physical sense as well as in our minds– are connected and disconnected to explore how one makes sense of the world. Each box shares hidden notes, questions and found material. They are meant to be touched and sifted through. Pull tabs unfold handwritten notes and lists that encourage the act of sharing, conversation and participation with the viewer. The tea boxes are objects that embody what we choose to share and communicate and what we decide to hold in. A relationship is built between the way in which we can exist in many plans at once in our minds, and the physical space we inhabit at a given time.

Dog ear-ing a page is a physical action. A way to return, to come back. Idiosyncratic to the current reader’s inner world, yet open to future interpretations. Much like the materiality of the work in the show, it is a conscious intervention to an object. It’s an obstruction of the text, but also an opening to a new understanding.

Forever reading, writing, making & thinking in Memory of Bernadette Mayer, May 12, 1945- November 22, 2022

Morgan Canavan (b. 1989) is an artist who has held two-person and solo exhibitions with Sweetwater, Berlin, Atlanta Contemporary, White Flag Projects Library, Saint Louis, Hester, New York, and Blood Gallery, Brooklyn. Canavan's work has been included in group exhibitions with Storage Gallery, New York; Potts, Alhambra; Kimberly Klark, Queens; Honor Fraser, Los Angeles; VI Dancer, Oakland; and Chin's Push, Los Angeles. Canavan studied at the Malmö Art Academy, Yale Norfolk, and holds a BFA from the Cooper Union, New York. Morgan Canavan lives and works in Los Angeles.

Ben Estes is a painter that lives in Kingston, NY, who has most recently shown his work at Situations Gallery (NYC), Paula Cooper Gallery (NYC), and Headstone Gallery (Kingston). He is also the author of the poetry collections ABC Moonlight and Illustrated Games of Patience (both published by The Song Cave), and is the editor of Together & Alone, The Photographs of Karlheinz Weinberger; and the poetry anthology On The Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book, editing selections from the journals of the painter Charles Burchfield.

Marisa Takal (b. 1991, Montclair, New Jersey) received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. Takal has shown in numerous solo, duo, and group shows at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; White Columns, New York; Company Gallery, New York; Page Gallery, New York; Nicodim Gallery, New York; Bernard Heller Museum, New York; Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts; Del Vaz Projects, Santa Monica; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Bolsky Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles; Jeffrey Stark, New York; Loyal Gallery, Stockholm. In 2016, she was named the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award and the Stanley Hollander Award. Takal lives and works in Los Angeles.

Audrey Gair
Rind

opening November 22, 2024

Phyllis Baldino, Max Guy & Ellie Rae Hunter
Outliners
October 4 - November 10, 2024

Elly Reitman
energy
August 16 - September 20, 2024

Michelle Grabner, Kathleen Morris & Bronson Smillie
The Weather, or some other accident, curated by Danica Pinteric
July 12 - July 29, 2024

Tiziana La Melia
Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster
June 7 - July 6, 2024

Jacob Jackmauh, Caitlin McCann & Benjamin Stallings
As for me, I’m just passing through this planet
March 8 - April 14, 2024

Irina Jasnowski Pascual
Wipers
September 15 - October 29, 2023

Coco Klockner
honesty
July 8 - August 6, 2023

Morgan Canavan, Ben Estes, Marisa Takal
More Coming Back & More Returning
May 5 - June 11, 2023

Sylvie Hayes-Wallace
Center of the Universe
August 5 - September 18, 2022

Amanda Horowitz
Bad Water, True West or Between Myself the Crickets and the Coyote
performed by Sophia Cleary and Ada Friedman
July 14 & July 15, 2022

Suzanna Zak
Coming Home to the Ice Age
opening May 13 - June 24, 2022

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About
Instagram

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open by appointment

located beside
320 E. Churchwell Ave
Knoxville, Tennessee

Michelle Grabner, Kathleen Morris & Bronson Smillie The Weather, or some other accident, curated by Danica PintericJuly 12 - July 29, 2024 Tiziana La Melia Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster June 7 - July 6, 2024

★ About Instagram ★open by appointment located beside320 E. Churchwell Ave Knoxville, Tennessee

Michelle Grabner, Kathleen Morris & Bronson Smillie
The Weather, or some other accident, curated by Danica Pinteric
July 12 - July 29, 2024

Tiziana La Melia
Country Mouse City Mouse Hamster
June 7 - July 6, 2024

★

About
Instagram

★

open by appointment

located beside
320 E. Churchwell Ave
Knoxville, Tennessee