Federica Schiavo Gallery is pleased to present Extractions, the second solo show by Ishmael Randall Weeks at the gallery.

The show takes an interest in a continued dialogue within geographic, architectural, and cultural space that has a particular reference to time as a marker for the confluence of past, present and future. Within the research aspects of Randall Weeks’ work is an acute interest in the specificity of source material as a valuable tool to weave meaning into transformative states with a particular focus on archeology and museology.

The works in the show present Metalized Memory, a four parts installation with specific crafted wood display cases containing copper-plated contemporary objects sourced from pre-Colombian archaeological sites that elicit a museological gaze disrupting the distinction between debris, artifact and art object; a wall and floor mounted brass structural work titled Wind Variations Construct holds fragile naturally eroded 1960’s bricks from the abandoned utopian construction sites in the desert. Alongside these works are photo-transfer images that brought together pay tribute to constructivist form and commercial consumerism. 

Two wall mounted works from the series Excavation Annotations are compositions based on textile works from the Nazca culture, but where those textiles are digitally altered and colored and then transferred onto acrylic gel whose material consistency feels much like papyrus or hide. These works hang delicately on steel bars and sit alongside copper and silver plates, minerals and other objects that take into account different monumental time frames. 

Within these sculptures and materials is a closely allied theme of economic scarcity that concerns itself with memory, identity and ways of living within the landscape rooted in a push and pull of fragility over security.