THE ROUND CHAOS
CURATED BY DEXTER WIMBERLY

ALEX CALLENDER, ADIN KACHISI, JACKIE MILAD, SENGHOR REID

APRIL 28 – JUNE 12, 2021

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of The Round Chaos, an exhibition curated by Dexter Wimberly, featuring recent paintings and mixed-media works by Alex Callender, Adin Kachisi, Jackie Milad, and Senghor Reid. These artists have built their practices exploring complex historical and personal narratives, as well as the delicate relationships between humans and the natural environment. This will be their first exhibition with the gallery.

Figurative paintings by Northampton, Massachusetts-based artist Alex Callender reflect a focus on proposing an alternative Atlantic history performed in scenes by women channeled from colonial painting imagery. Callender’s interest in using historical source material is not to reanimate the past, but to consider how art that naturalizes certain types of people like women, people of color, and migrants often depicts economic narratives that attempt to normalize inequity and invisible labor. 

With an equal regard for history and materiality, Zimbabwe-born, Harlem-based painter Adin Kachisi’s work is an exploration into the inner world of thought and emotion and the outer world of space and nature. Kachisi’s latest series of abstract paintings employ a gestural process in which acrylic paint on canvas is overlaid with thick drop splashes of coffee residue or very liquified streams of coffee tints.

Baltimore-based, Jackie Milad’s symbol-laden mixed-media works utilize a combination of drawing, painting, collage, and textile techniques. Through the dense collapse of layers and disparate symbols on a single surface, Milad tells her own story as a multi-ethnic first-generation Egyptian-Honduran American. While Milad’s process-driven work unpacks the complexities of self, Detroit-based artist Senghor Reid explores interactions between the human body and the environment. Reid creates visual representations of dreams, memories and traces of human contact with exterior nature and its connection to the domestic interior. Reid is concerned with how the Black body fits within these spaces. Created with the use of a brightly colored palette, many of Reid’s paintings depict quotidian life, while others contemplate the beauty and power of water - our most important natural resource.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

ALEX CALLENDER

Alex Callender was born in New York City and graduated with her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, MA in 2005. Callender works in the mediums of painting, drawing and installation and has shown nationally and internationally. She completed residencies with art institutions such as:  Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, NY; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY; and DRAWinternational in France. Her work is held in the collections of the American Embassy in Kyrgyzstan and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art, Eastport, ME. Callender currently lives and works in Northampton, MA, where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Smith College.

ADIN KACHISI

Adin Kachisi was born in Zimbabwe and currently lives in Harlem, New York City. He holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK and a Graduate Diploma in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Western Australia.

Kachisi’s art is an exploration into the inner world of thought and emotion, and the outer world of space and nature. His latest paintings employ a gestural process in which acrylic paint on canvas is overlaid with thick drop splashes of coffee residue or very liquified streams of coffee tints.
The results are abstract paintings of ground and sky maps consisting of geo spatial views below and constellations above. They capture the organic abstraction of nature, combining fluidity, randomness, order, symmetry, surprise, and movement combined with contours of stillness.

JACKIE MILAD

Jackie Milad is a Baltimore City-based artist featured in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Select exhibitions include: C.Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD; Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC; Grizzly Grizzly,  Philadelphia, PA; Langer Over Dickie, Chicago, IL; Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; Arthur Ross Gallery University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Museo de Arte de Mazatlan. Mazatlan, MX; and DiFOCUR de Sinaloa Sala de Arte Joven Galleria, Culiacan, MX. Milad is a multi-year recipient of the Individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2019, she was named a Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalist and a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby Grantee. Her work is in the following private collections: GLB Memorial Foundation Collection, The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and Facebook, Inc.  Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, MA, and her MFA from Towson University, MD. Besides her active studio practice, Jackie Milad also has an extensive career as a curator and educator. 

Milad’s work will be featured in an upcoming group exhibition at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, where she will be completing an artist-in-residency program during the summer of 2021.

SENGHOR REID

Senghor Reid received a BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI and a MAT (Masters in Teaching) from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. He is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Cranbrook Schools, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Reid was awarded a Kresge Arts in Detroit Visual Artist Fellowship in 2009 and the prestigious Governor’s Award for Emerging Artist of the Year in 2000. Reid’s work has been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad in galleries and museums including: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI; The Charles H. Wright Museum, Detroit, MI; Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY; St. Catharine Museum, Ontario, Canada and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY. Reid’s work is in multiple private, public and corporate collections including the University of Michigan, MI; the Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI; The Schomburg Center for Research, New York, NY; and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dexter Wimberly is an independent curator who has organized exhibitions and programming in galleries and institutions around the world including: The Third Line in Dubai; The Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA; KOKI ARTS in Tokyo, Japan; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, NC; and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, NY. Wimberly’s exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times and Artforum, and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He is the co-founder of the financial literacy platforms Art World Conference and Art World Learning. Wimberly is also a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art and founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan.

Jackie Milad, Catracha (second iteration), mixed media on hand-dyed canvas, 2020

Jackie Milad, Catracha (second iteration), mixed media on hand-dyed canvas, 2020