New York Exhibition | Pure Gaze —— Pressure, Control, Release(1)

🔍 Tiona Nekkia McClodden, a Black Queer artist from Philadelphia, is currently exhibiting her solo show PURE GAZE at White Cube New York. All the works are from her ongoing series Never Let Me Go, which she started in 2023. 🤔 In contemporary art, the combination of abstraction and figuration has always been a recurring topic of discussion. 🪢 In Tiona's works, she references Kinbaku-bi, a Japanese rope-tying technique. She explores the desires, control, and release in human relationships, transforming this physical tension into the "memory" of materials. 🔗 To be honest, I personally think her creative approach is very smart. Generally, works with similar themes often depict more oppressive and grotesque scenes, which collectors are not very likely to choose. 🍃🌸 In Never Let Me Go, Tiona follows Pierre Bourdieu's 1993 text "The Field of Cultural Production" — acknowledging and suspending the subjectivity of self-gaze, prioritizing form and aesthetic experience without being influenced by utility, function, or social meaning. #NewYork 🌟🌟🌟