MONSIEUR ZOHORE

NADA Miami 2021

December 1 – December 4, 2021

Ice Palace Studios | Booth 12.07

de boer is thrilled to announce a solo presentation entitled Rush by New York and Richmond-based artist Monsieur Zohore for NADA Miami 2021. The presentation will consist of medium and large-scale mixed media paintings partnered with a scheduled performance. The performance, a Beirut tournament on a crafted Corinthian inspired table, critically examines the widely accepted patriarchal representations associated with fraternity parties. Coupling performance and painting Zohore takes aim at the lascivious practices inherited from ancient Greek academic culture and pokes at ritual assimilation glamorized through popular Hollywood characters. 

Zohore’s work unpacks how fraternal systems seek to create collective tribal-like identity. Zohore acts as both a bystander examining the inherent danger of what can happen when something is built on a false foundation and concurrently, through the installation, as a participant “rushing” to join. Not to mention the eroticism of half-naked men in togas, which symbolize and uphold hetero norms. 

Appropriating imagery from sources such as Raphael's (1483-1520) renaissance masterpiece, The School of Athens, 1509-1511, and the cult classic film Animal House (1978), Zohore's paintings explore the psychosexual conundrum that lies at the intersection of academia and entertainment. Zohore's unique process places these 'paintings' on household paper towels, which are then bleached and decolorized to elicit the idea of bathetic bodies; toxic, wasteful, and disposable as a metaphor for the treatment of marginalized domestic workers. The comedy within these durable, gratuitous materials and metaphors quickly transforms itself into a drama exploring interpersonal and socio-economic inequities. Zohore's excavation of history reminds the viewer of where culture resided and where it might go. 

More pointedly, the medium has an intended sense of labor, a laboring body—typically marginalized—equally durable and disposable. Zohore further builds a bridge between the duality found in Greek allegories and sculptures. A tradition of laborers represented as physically divine creatures, and concomitantly, bear the determined symbolism of a brute labor class. Alluding to the human comedy of it all, Zohore's employment of domestic materials as a metaphor for labor appraises cultural expectations and timeless, consumer-driven capitalism.

Monsieur Zohore is an Ivorian-American artist based in Richmond, VA and New York, NY. His practice is invested in widespread consumption and digestion of cultural norms by conflating quotidian domestic labor with art production. Through performance, sculpture, installation, and theater, his methods explore queer histories alongside his own Ivorian-American heritage through a multi-faceted lens of humor, economics, art history, and labor. Zohore has had solo and two-person exhibitions in 2021 at de boer, Los Angeles (forthcoming), Springsteen, Baltimore, MD, and Jack Barret Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group shows include; de boer, Los Angeles; New Release Gallery, New York, NY; One Trick Pony, Los Angeles; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Galleria Bianconi, Milan, Italy; and Spurs Beijing, China (forthcoming). Zohore is a 2021 Socrates Sculpture Park Fellow, Long Island City, NY.

New Art Dealers Alliance was founded in 2002, New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) is a not-for-profit 501c6 collective of professionals working with contemporary art. Our mission is to create an open flow of information, support, and collaboration within our field and to develop a stronger sense of community among our constituency. We believe that the adversarial approach to exhibiting and selling art has run its course. We believe that change can be achieved through fostering constructive thought and dialogue between various points in the art industry from large galleries to small spaces, non-profit and commercial alike. Through support and encouragement, we facilitate strong and meaningful relationships between our members working with new contemporary and emerging art; while enhancing the public’s interaction with contemporary art.

For further information about NADA Miami 2021 at Ice Palace Studios please click here.

Selected Works

NEWS