Curated by 2025: Shored Against My Ruins - curated by DJ Hellerman

Exhibition text

Fragmentation is ultimately an illusion. It is a ruse, a mirage that makes itself known through the melancholy and the euphoric, as life separates and splinters. Sometimes the stuff of daily life–a moonrise, an unassuming meal, an unyielding lament, the folding of freshly laundered things–becomes a ritualized act from which we glimpse the sublime. Catching these tiny fleeting shards is everything, wholeness.

Shored Against My Ruins features work by seven artists who embrace loose ends, the indecipherable, and the untidy. Their work is deeply connected to the process of coming undone. With a distinct relationship to the physical and psychic archive, each artist tackles the notion of reassembling. Their work is built of personal and communal objects, memories, and autobiographical experiences reminding us to pay close attention to what we collect during our own process of endless reconstruction.

Artists: Franco Andrés, Maxime Cavajani, TR Ericsson, Peter Gallo, King Cobra, Karl Karner, Maja Ruznic

Text by DJ Hellerman

Information about the artists

Maja Ruznic

Maja Ruznic (b. 1983, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a New Mexico-based artist whose paintings melds personal memory, mythology, psychoanalysis, and esoteric traditions into layered compositions that hover between figuration and abstraction. Influenced in part by the psychological residues of war and displacement, her work explores themes of nostalgia, childhood experience, and transformation. After receiving her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco (2009), Ruznic started working primarily with ink and watercolor. During this time she developed her intuitive, fluid style which she refers to as “the drunken hand.” She has since expanded this approach to oil and gouache, painting across both large and intimate formats, extracting dreamlike forms from diluted pigment and luminous veils of color. Her process is open-ended and improvisational, drawing from Slavic shamanism, Jungian psychology, sacred geometry, and alchemical symbolism. Her introspective, mystical approach places her in dialogue with a lineage of visionary painters such as Paul Klee and Hilma af Klint.

Ruznic’s paintings are held in major public and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Dallas Museum of Art; The Rachofsky House; He Art Museum (Foshan, China); Portland Art Museum; EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art (Finland); the Crocker Art Museum; and the Jiménez–Colón Collection (Puerto Rico). Recent solo exhibitions include Srklet at Karma, Los Angeles (2025); The World Doesn’t End at Karma, New York (2024); Mutter at CFA Berlin (2024); and Migration of Spirits at Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque (2022). She was featured in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing, and is currently participating in Once Within a Time at SITE Santa Fe’s 12th International, curated by Cecilia Alemani. Her work continues to gain international recognition for its haunting resonance and psychological depth.

Maxime Cavajani

Maxime Cavajani (b. 1988, Martinique, France) is a multimedia artist whose work spans experimental video, photography, drawing, sculpture, performance, and installation. Their practice delves into the interstitial realms between queer bodies and perception, probing what is “seen” and “legible.” By exploring the slippages between image and imaging, sculpture and forming, performance and gesture, as well as sound and noise, Cavajani challenges conventional modes of address. Rather than pinpointing movement, their work resonates through bits, blurs, traces, and reflections—inviting viewers to interrogate their own mnemonic systems in relation to desire, violence, death, loss, and love

Cavajani’s work has recently appeared in group exhibitions at Atelier Gallery and Past Present Projects in Philadelphia, and at WorthlessStudios in Brooklyn Their short film Dans le Blanc des Oeufs was screened at EHESS in Paris in 2018, and in 2020 they contributed article and collages to Frog Magazine’s 19th issue, Le Corps de Rome. They earned a Teaching Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s in Architecture from ÉNSAV (Versailles), and an MA in Arts & Languages from EHESS. Their work has been supported by numerous awards and fellowships: the Susan Cromwell Coslett Traveling Fellowship (2022) and a Center for Experimental Ethnography summer grant for development of their multi-channel video installation grounds (chapter1), the Movement Lab Fellowship from RISD’s Film/Animation/Video Department for 2023–24, the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation grant (2023) for an art book accompanying grounds (chapter1), the Center for Public Art and Space Chair’s Award (2021), and the Tom of Finland Foundation’s second prize in the Multiple Figure category in 2019 for perfection—a study of, a graphite work on paper.

Franco Andrés

Franco Andrés (b. 1978, Miami, FL) is an artist working across painting, sculpture, and ceramics. He holds a B.F.A. in sculpture from Santa Fe University of Art and Design and an M.F.A. in Studio Arts from Syracuse University, completed in 2020. Born and raised in Miami, he currently lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. He uses traditional mediums—oil on linen and ceramic sculpture—combined with repetition to evoke a sense of longing, remembrance, and the fragility of perception. His paintings are built around a consistent vocabulary of recurring motifs and partially legible figures that seem to hover between presence and absence. These elements emerge and dissolve across the canvas, not to tell a story, but to mirror the unstable, subjective nature of memory itself. Rather than referencing digital reproduction, Andrés’ use of repetition aligns with psychological recall—his paintings function as memory palaces, where each image becomes a spatial container for emotional and mental resonance. Franco Andrés’ sculptural assemblages are characterized by rich textures and surfaces—incorporating materials like wax, fur, feathers, soil, and charred wood—that create finishes both sumptuous and visceral. His work navigates the space between the organic and the constructed, where materials take on a life of their own and notions of authorship become fluid.

His work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China; Lacuna Projects in Londons, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY; the Olive Tjaden and Experimental Galleries at Cornell University; SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico; Icebox Projects in Philadelphia, PA; and Spring Break Art Fair in New York City. He was a post-graduate fellow at the Santa Fe Art Institute and presented the solo outdoor project A Situation for Open Possibilities in collaboration with the New Mexico Museum of Art during the 2016–17 season.

Karl Karner

Karl Karner (b.1973 in Feldbach, Austria) lives and works in Feldbach, Austria. Karner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna under Professor Heimo Zobernig. Karner positions his work between the disciplines of visual arts, performance and dance theatre. Within his practice, Karner continuously discusses bodily perception and the concept of corporeality itself. These are not only related to the human body, but can yet be understood as a wide discussion of object, materiality and space. In the artist´s installations and art environments, viewers frequently become players. Such participative impulses accentuate the irony inherent in these artworks. Karner‘s multisensorial, fictional fairytale worlds tell a story of incessantly repeated settings of everyday life, albeit with their function deconstructed, which clearly point out the absurdity of certain processes and elements.

Recent solo exhibitions include: "Skulpturen", Kunsthaus Weiz, AT, 'Brutbladd_the horse eats with me', Galerie  Kandlhofer, 2021, 'rhabarber schwarz', Artdepot Gallery, Innsbruck, 2018; 'getting down on knees and nerves' collaboration with Nana Mandl, Kunsthalle Graz, 2018; 'Spiel gerade Höllentor', Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer, 2016; 'Nude Program', ABContemporary, 2016; 'Lungball', Galerie Lendl, 2016 and 'FakeFukoo', ABContemporary, 2015.

KING COBRA

KING COBRA (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner, b. 1986, Philadelphia, PA) is a Brooklyn-based sculptor and performance artist whose work confronts colonial histories of violence through deeply tactile and evocative materials such as silicone, pearls, synthetic hair, urethane foam, and more. Her sculptures primarily depict fragmented Black bodies marked by historical trauma and medical malpractice, especially reflecting the experiences of Black women from the 18th to early 20th centuries. As a licensed tattoo artist, she extends her exploration of the body to live performances and tattooing, challenging racialized ideas of beauty and the politics of skin. Garner holds a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an M.F.A. in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has completed residencies at several prominent institutions.

Garner’s work has been shown internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including solo shows like White Meat at JTT in New York (2023), REVOLTED at the New Museum (2022), Pale In Comparison at SCAD Museum of Art (2022), and Steal, Kill and Destroy: A Thief Who Intended Them Maximum Harm at the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermakr (2021). She has performed and exhibited at MoMA PS1, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Socrates Sculpture Park, Abrons Arts Center, and Pioneer Works, among others. In 2021, her work was acquired by the Studio Museum in Harlem, marking a significant milestone in her career. Garner continues to explore themes of memory, trauma, and the body through a multidisciplinary approach that blends sculpture, performance, and tattoo practice.

Peter Gallo

Peter Gallo (b. 1959, Rutland, VT) is an artist known for his distinctive assemblages and collages crafted from diverse materials such as dental floss, animal bones, photographs, toothpicks, and string. His fluid, improvisational process resists finality, with works constantly evolving and being amended. Gallo merges imagery drawn from sources as varied as gay pornography and ornithology with texts by Roland Barthes, Freud, and lyrics from bands like Joy Division and The Cocteau Twins, creating complex layered narratives. A recurring subject in his work is the concept of the “State,” which stands as a key thematic focus. He holds a BA from Middlebury College and earned both an MA and a PhD in Art History from Concordia University in Montreal. Gallo lives and works in Hyde Park, Vermont.

Gallo’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, Adams and Ollman in Portland, Oregon, and White Columns in New York. His practice has attracted critical attention in major publications such as Artforum (https://www.artforum.com/events/peter-gallo-by-dj-hellerman-1234730147/) The New York Times, Art in America, and The Village Voice. Over the years, his pieces have been included in group shows and thematic exhibitions that explore identity, materiality, and queer culture. Gallo remains a distinctive and quietly influential figure in contemporary art, known for his intellectual rigor and poetic, improvised approach.

TR Ericsson

TR Ericsson (b. 1972, Cleveland, OH) is an American artist whose work centers on deeply personal narratives that chronicle the lives of the artist, his working- and middle-class Midwestern family, and the broader cultural forces that shaped their experiences across generations. Drawing from a substantial family archive of inherited photographs, letters, and documents, Ericsson transforms these private materials into complex visual works using both traditional and experimental media such as smoke, ash, bronze, and nicotine. Through this process, he creates layered constellations of images, texts, and objects that blur the line between personal memory and collective history. He studied at the Art Students League in New York City, and lives and works between Brooklyn, New York, and Painesville, Ohio.

Ericsson’s work is held in the collections of major institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Everson Museum of Art. In 2025, his work will be featured in Nicotine Dreams at Vielmetter Los Angeles, Echoes of the Archive at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, and Crackle & Drag: Revisited at the International Center of Photography, New York. Past recognitions include a finalist position in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition (2019) and awards such as the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award shortlist (2015), the Kraszna-Krausz Best Photography Book shortlist (2016), and the 91st International Print Center Award (2017). His artist books—including Crackle & Drag (Yale University Press, 2015) and NICOTINE (TBW Books, 2024)—are held in library collections at Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution, among others.