Root of the Head: Karen Azoulay, Bianca Beck, and Kylie Lockwood

That first creature was all-in-self sustained: an infinite loop mouthing onto itself, eating away at itself, feeding back. The creature slays itself to sustain itself and in this act tells us the secret of its immortality. As in that thousand headed serpent called Hydra, thriving on her wounds. Each head lost is two more gained, and with each hurt her strength renewed. Emergent selves take root in the dirt of our scars. And though we plead the aether for change, to grow us into trees, it is still our bodies that make the stuff of trees (A watery and fibrous tongue. A vein. A hand.). We bend our limbs and move our eyes from east to west. The sun illuminating the particulars of our species; and they see a gendered flower, a queer asp, a black walnut. To those who can no longer run, but instead place roots into the ground and thicken their skin into husks of bark: we are our own infinite matter, closing our eyelids and petals when gone.

Simone DeSousa Gallery is pleased to announce Root of the Head, a three-person show that explores the body’s processes of transformation and regeneration. Through performative practices of sculpture, painting, photography, and collage, these new works by Azoulay, Beck, and Lockwood intersect in concept and space, evoking symbology and myth.

Karen Azoulay (b. 1977, Toronto, Canada). Solo exhibitions include CUE Art Foundation, New York, curated by Glenn Ligon; Four Gallery, Dublin; Mercer Union, Toronto, Primetime and Dose Projects, Brooklyn as well as Drew University in Madison, NJ. Her work has been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, C Magazine, Canadian Art and Vogue. She has staged commissioned performances for The Art Gallery of Ontario, and The Power Plant, Toronto. Group exhibitions include Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; Stichting, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Art & Idea, Mexico City; Galerie Kunstbuero, Vienna, White Columns, New York, as well as Erin Stump Projects in Toronto among others. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Bianca Beck (b. 1979, Columbus, OH, USA) received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Yale University. Beck has staged solo exhibitions at Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York) and White Columns (New York). Her work has been reviewed in many outlets including Artforum, Mousse, New American Paintings, and The New York Times. She has participated in group exhibitions at Cheim & Read (New York), Misako Rosen (Tokyo), V1 Gallery (Copenhagen), Tif Sigfrids (Los Angeles), Brand New Gallery (Milan), Emily Harvey Foundation (New York), among others. She currently lives in New York and is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Kylie Lockwood (b. 1983, Detroit, MI, USA) received her BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 2005, MFA from Hunter College in New York City in 2010 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014. Solo and two person exhibitions include: “The Fingertip is an Image Forming Organ of Sight,” Coop Gallery, Nashville, TN, “Statue Maker,” Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn, NY, and “Thinking Colon,” Popps Packing, Detroit, MI. Lockwood’s work has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; Reyes Projects, Birmingham, MI; Lord Ludd in Philadelphia, PA; Synchrotron Radiation Center, Stoughton, WI; Interstate, Brooklyn, NY, among others. She currently lives and works in Detroit, MI.