Exhibitions

TOREY AKERS: ABSCISSION

COOP Gallery / 507 Hagan St. October 3 - 24th (Reception: October 3 1:00pm - 9:00pm)

Torey Akers

COOP is pleased to present Abscission, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Torey Akers. Abscission interrogates desire in material terms, using want, rather than need, to unearth the buried histories of non-normative intimacy. The word “abscission” refers to the natural detachment of the ripe and wilting portions of fruited plants, a process that underscores the painful science of growth and self-determination.

In a political era defined by the algorithmic construction of fear, Abscission reflects the universality in the specific, taking on the mantle of the Renaissance-era erotic nude—simultaneously coy and brazen, exploited and self-referential—by transforming awkwardness into adoration through touch.

Akers is less invested in the gender binary or corporatized notions of ‘body positivity.’ Instead, her work is informed by compositional intervention in biopolitic, by gesture as a form of devotion. The artwork in Abscission operates in a visual modality just to the left of sentimental, depicting what it’s like to miss somebody, real or imagined, at the end of the world.

More about the Artist

Torey Akers is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. She holds MFAs in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art and in Creative Nonfiction from Hunter College. As an artist, she has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Arts Letters and Numbers, Penland School of Craft, AIR Studios Paducah, Surf Point, and MASS MoCA. She has shown her work all over the country, most recently at AIR Gallery in DUMBO, NY and WellWell Projects in Portland, OR. Learn more about Akers at toreyakers.com.