Held Ground

The artists in Held Ground have all stayed. They’ve kept studios in a region that keeps trying to price them out, holding on through rent hikes and lost leases and the slow disappearance of the schools that brought them here, that trained them, were where they then taught. These artists didn’t leave. This show is about what staying looks like.

These are the mentor artists of Art + Water. Each holds a studio in the building on Pier 29 and works directly with the artists in residence there. That’s the quiet argument underneath the show. When the schools close and the institutions thin out, the artists themselves become the thing that holds a culture up. Not metaphorically. They teach the next ones, keep the studios lit, pass the practice forward by hand.

Painting, printmaking, drawing, collage. Some of it is quiet. Some of it isn’t. All of it comes from people who treat a practice as something you treasure and defend and pass on, rather than something you’re simply handed.

The title carries two meanings: Held as in kept, not let go of. Held, as in what you do for someone you won’t let fall. Look closely and you’ll find both in the making of the work: the patience that goes into it, the depth, the care put into things nobody’s paying anyone to care about.

Further Triennial is a survey of what the region is making right now. Held Ground is a claim about who keeps that making possible, and about the artists who decided the ground was worth holding, and then became the ground.

Artists include Kathy Aoki, JD Beltran, Ana Teresa Fernández, Taraneh Hemami, Paul Madonna, Jet Martinez, George McCalman, Travis Somerville, David Wilson, and Jenifer Wofford.

Held Ground is curated by Heidi Rabben.