EXIT WOUNDS

Stephen Irwin

Phoenix Lindsey-Hall

September 1 – October 27, 2021

Press Release (PDF)

Checklist (PDF)

Marisa Newman Projects in collaboration with New Discretions is pleased to present Exit Wounds a two-person exhibition with artists Stephen Irwin and Phoenix Lindsey-Hall.

Irwin and Lindsey-Hall both explore aspects of the human body and its ultimate erasure.

Irwin’s series of either erased or marked over found images is haunting and beautiful. Using steel-wool, astringents, bleach, whiteout - Irwin rubs and abrades or marks over pictures from vintage pornography magazines. The reconfigured image leaves parts of the body intact encircling the hand, chest, face, genitalia in a manner that is like a shrine or a peep-hole or seeing the body-part through the viewfinder of a rifle. The results are Renaissance-like frescoes with a feeling of loss and wonderment.

Lindsey-Hall’s new series “Scream Inside Your Heart” is a ceramic series made in response to the recent and tragic death of those that have been lost to police violence and brutality. This work leverages the intersection of art and activism in response to the Black Lives Matter and Black Trans Lives Matter, and Queer Rights’ movements. This new body of work builds on Lindsey-Hall’s past projects centering on violence and hate crimes in queer communities and also addresses the larger issue of gun violence in the United States affecting so many of us.

In this series, Lindsey-Hall literally shoots wet clay with bullets to capture the negative space of the explosion that is made. The organic forms that are created with the "clay body" are a metaphor to the "human body" in an act of violence. The results are abstracted forms, which are finished with gun-metal metallic grey glaze.

These works address the violence to the body and often the Queer body.

Stephen Irwin (1959-2010) lived and worked in Louisville, Kentucky. His work has been exhibited at the New Center for Contemporary Art (Louisville, KY); The Speed Museum (Louisville, KY); the Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati, OH); Maureen Paley (London); Gallery Diet (Miami, FL); r/e Projects (Madrid); PPOW (New York); Vox Populi (Philadelphia); Galerie Stefan Roepke (Cologne); Zephyr Gallery (Louisville); and DePauw University (Greencastel, IN); among others. His work has appeared in Beautiful Decay, The Huffington Post, Vice Magazine, Butt Magazine, and Art Papers, and is in the collections of the Speed Museum and 21c Museum, both in Louisville, KY.

Phoenix Lindsey-Hall is a Brooklyn-based mixed media artist who is Georgia-born and Louisville, KY resident. Lindsey-Hall holds a MFA in Photography from Parsons The New School of Design in 2012 and a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art in 2004. Lindsey-Hall has had solo exhibitions at Victori + Mo (New York, NY), Christopher Stout Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) Brown Gallery at Duke University (Durham, NC), Gallery Aferro (Newark, NJ) and shown in group shows in various galleries in New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Louisville, KY, Savannah GA and in Pingyao, China. Their residencies include MassMOCA, New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS), and the Emerge Program with the Aljira Center for Contemporary Arts in conjunction with Creative Capital. Their work has appeared in OUT Magazine, Them Magazine, The Art Newspaper, and Vice. Their artwork centers on violence in queer communities.

A catalogue with an essay by Jesse Dorris will accompany the exhibition.