For Frieze Viewing Room 2020, Chapter NY is pleased to present a selection of recent paintings from two ongoing series by Adam Gordon and two films by Tourmaline – Salacia and Atlantic is a Sea of Bones.

Adam Gordon’s multi-disciplinary practice shifts between installation, painting, and constructed encounters. Often working serially and through repetition, the artist pushes the representational potential of his subjects. His work centers around constructions of space and challenges our inherent need for a defined narrative. Gordon captures unexpected nuance in his banal subjects, training our attention towards the subtle ambiguities of everyday existence.

Gordon’s paintings include hyper-realistic representations based on found and original photographs, reinterpretations of existing people and spaces, and subjects derived entirely from imagination. In Gordon’s most recent paintings, the artist pushes his representational subjects closer towards abstraction. His notably looser touch and thinly painted surfaces allow light to penetrate his compositions creating a new luminous quality within his work.

Tourmaline is an artist, filmmaker, cultural producer, writer, and activist whose practice highlights the experiences of black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. By expanding the legacy of forgotten figures into our present moment and highlighting their minor yet impactful creative acts, Tourmaline shifts our understanding of broader cultural histories and encourages a reconsideration of the mainstream contemporary narrative.

In Salacia, Tourmaline builds a fictionalized story around Mary Jones, a black, trans, sex worker who lived in New York in the 1830s. The film takes place in historical Seneca Village, a free Black land-owning community that was destroyed for the development of Central Park. It considers the simultaneous hyper-visibility and invisibility of trans life, continued systemic racism, and the displacement of marginalized communities.

Atlantic is a Sea of Bones is a short film drawn from the Lucille Clifton poem of the same name that follows Egyptt LaBejia, an NYC-based performer through the 80s, 90s, and 2000’s in NYC. Set to an original score, the film highlights moments of performance and self-expression in the black, queer and trans community, revealing how historical violence continues to haunt our contemporary landscape and is inextricably linked to the ongoing AIDS epidemic.