Gallery Watch: 'If Death Ever Learn' at Someday Gallery

Text by Clare Gemima (photos courtesy of Someday Gallery)

'If Death Ever Learn' by Brittni Ann Harvey

Someday Gallery, 120 Walker St.

"If Death Ever Learn," produced by Brittni Ann Harvey, is the first exhibition to show in Someday, an engaging new space joining the Walker Street gallery gang. Excitement can be felt merely in the space's infancy, let alone how much Harvey's work sets such a bold precedent for every show to come. 

Harvey's show immediately suggests the artist is well-versed and extremely literate in her research. Creating objects that curve, hang and twine, Harvey sets up a debate between man-made and digital intervention on a very symbolic scale. 

Harvey leads us through an array of problem-solving artifacts that relate to the contractual marriage between artificial intelligence and industry. Her dogs are adorned with architectural soft sculpture, preluding an identifiable canine cuteness that contrasts with the terrifying idea that manufactured four-legged robots could be weaponized. 

Through military-driven initiatives that Harvey extrapolates in "If Death Ever Learn," the audience is exposed to the slippage between the industrial revolution's residual downpour and technology's constant responsibility to be used for the greater good. 

Through her paintings, tapestries, braided bronze, and dog-like sculptures, Harvey toys with mass engineering and the advancement in bio-tech through an effeminate showcasing of corporal colors, sculptures and decor. 

I asked Someday Gallery Director Rosie Motley for her thoughts: 

The show brings together new oil on burlap paintings, embroidered collages, and three free-standing bronze sculptures that are loosely based on robotic dogs, the most familiar of which are produced by the Massachussettes based company Boston Dynamics.

In all of the works, Brittni combines both analog and digital processes — first sketching by hand and then scanning her drawings and manipulating them in a computer program to produce digital embroideries and jacquard-woven fabrics. 

While Brittni Ann Harvey's show ends Saturday at Someday Gallery, keep an eye on this new space for more exhibits in the future. For more information, visit the gallery's website here. Someday is open Thursday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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Clare Gemima is a visual artist from New Zealand. New-ish to the East Village, she spends her time as an artist assistant and gallery go-er, hungry to explore what's happening in her local art world. You can find her work here: claregemima.com