Postal Mascota
Everyone on earth is waiting for the same letter,
the same letter they themselves
have failed to send.
The snake travels on shifting muscles
making space
and
taking space away.
The rose hip travels by bird
and dulcitude or
the slow decay of its outer walls.
A woman travels by train
while a leather strap holds her foot in place.
The tadpole tries not to travel too far
before becoming a frog.
She used to walk in a circle
on the corner of Altamirano and
Icazbalceta,
each day holding someone different:
A snake
A fish
An electric eel.
When I was a boy
I lured a big big fish into my net.
J smashed her head with a rock
and when we cut her open
she was filled with roe.
Hold your pets close, but not too close.
Hold your faith close, but not too close.
One idea: we could get down
onto our hands and knees
and bang on the earth
like it’s a big door.
-Rachel James
Tomer Aluf (b. 1977) is a New York-based painter who creates gestural tableaus that vacillate between figuration and abstraction. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Retrospective gallery in Hudson, New York and KANSAS gallery in New York and in group exhibitions at the Museo Britanico Americano, Mexico City, Bronx Museum, Ramat Gan’s Museum for Israeli Art, Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, Bodega Gallery in New York, Cleopatra Gallery in Brooklyn, and Andel 31 in Copenhagen. He has received awards from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Dedalus Foundation, and the American Cultural Foundation. He is co-founder of SOLOWAY Gallery, Brooklyn. He is working on an artist book published by Gervais Jassaud, France.
Sadie Laska (b.1974) received a BFA from West Virginia University in 1992 and an MFA from Bard College, New York, in 2014. Laska’s solo exhibitions include ‘Left Hand’, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Paris (2012); ‘Play it as it Lays’, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Geneva (2014); SAROJANE Kerry Schuss, New York (2014); ‘Plain Air’, Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg (2015); ‘I Clouded’, Canada, New York (2015); ‘A Foot, Some Guns, A Boot, Some Hands, Some Lips, A Breast, & A Snail’, 56 Henry, New York (2016); and ‘Rock Solid’, Office Baroque, Brussels (2016). Laska is one half of the New York band I.U.D., formed in 2004 with fellow artist Lizzi Bougatsos. They have performed at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, PS1 MoMA, and the New Museum. She lives and works in New York.
Monique Mouton (b. 1984) is a painter who uses lyrical color and soft figuration in her work, calling to mind stain painting, color field painting, shape as medium painting, abstract landscape painting, and provisional painting. Her fuzzy forms, marks, edge-play, rips, drips, blank spaces and washy moods give her work a unique sense of ambiguity.
Nikholis Planck (b. 1987) He lives and works in New York. Many of Planck’s projects have paired mixed media paintings with low platforms or stage constructions and included performance schedules. Performers have included Keith LaFuente, Mario Maron, Paul Buonaguro, Karmeknife X, Elspeth Walker, Carolyn Schoerner, Winslow Laroche, Dan Herschlein, Chloe Maratta, Flannery Silva, and Max Guy. Planck has worked with numerous independent publishers to produce printed material, and regularly self-publishes his work in book, print and zine form.