BACKLOT

6/8 - 7/20, 2024

Opening Reception: 6/8 from 6-9 pm with artist talk 7:00-8:00 pm

Cleo the Project Space is pleased to present ‘Backlot’ with work by Marianna Peragallo and Thomas Martinez Pilnik. This exhibition posits domestic life as set design by utilizing everyday objects as a backdrop for fantastical narrative.

Marianna Peragallo’s sculptural work activates everyday objects like gardening gloves and plastic bags with movement and gestures that play with their intended function. An animation of a plastic bag twirling, a plastic bag spitting water like a fountain, and thermoplastic gardening gloves in shadow puppet postures move these objects from the periphery to center stage. By subverting their original context, the works create scenes that magnify the familiar and make it surreal. These moments covertly convey the personal memories attached to each object i.e. the gloves her late grandmother would wear when washing dishes, a nod to the caretaking, labor, and vanity attached to her outward character with the goofy disposition that surfaced in private. These rememberings and subsequent elevations in the artwork pay homage to the domestic space that is forever attached to the minutia.  

With the similar prerogative of capturing the domestic space with the drama of set design in mind, Thomas Martinez Pilnik utilizes both ceramics and painting to set a scene between both physical and memoried planes. For this exhibition, Pilnik represents windows and their accompanying sills that traverse both 2D and 3D spectacles. The frames painted on the gallery walls are flattened symbols of themselves and the attached sills that jut out to include small ceramic works, like bean cans and plates, invite an animated still life of everyday activity to the entire installation. It is a backdrop for a play set in the domestic, evoking both remembered moments of looking outward while grounded in peripheral objects that settle the narrative in relative ambiguity. The scene is animated when the viewer steps in to observe Pilnik’s hand in the rendering. What transpires is a consistent reimagining of narrative that comes from a central character and his personal connection to the construction.  

This is the third collaboration between Peragallo, a Brazilian American artist, and Pilnik, a British Brazilian artist, remarking on intercultural exchanges. This show at Cleo the Project Space marks a moment of experimentation with both artists exploring installation, video, and sculpture without marketable constraints. The reintroduction of Cleo as a non-profit arts organization means full financial support of artists’ creativity outside of a traditional market with the help of grants and donor contributions. This show is the first in a long line of barrier breaking exhibitions in Cleo’s programming from emerging artists based in the South and beyond.   

Marianna Peragallo (b. 1988) is a Brazilian-American artist based in New York, NY. ​​Peragallo has recently exhibited at Spring/Break Art Show in New York and LA, Bravin Lee Gallery (New York, NY), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), RegularNormal (New York, NY), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), A.I.R. Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). She has had solo exhibitions at Smith College (Northampton, MA), Here Arts (New York, NY), and Winston’s (Los Angeles, CA). Peragallo was an artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony (Woodstock, NY) in 2014, Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists residency (North Adams, MA) in 2019, Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) in 2019 and 2022, and Stove Works in 2023. She was in residence at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program from 2021-2022. Marianna received a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and an MFA from The School of Visual Arts, New York.

Thomas Martinez Pilnik (b. 1993) was raised in London by Brazilian parents. Pilnik then moved to the US and obtained his BA in Studio Art and Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia, M.Ed in Postsecondary Education from the University of Southern California, and MFA from the University of Connecticut. He is now based in Los Angeles. Pilnik has exhibited internationally in spaces including Moosey Gallery and Arusha in London, SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York, Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon, and Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles, and has created installations and works in collaboration with organizations such as the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health and Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy. He has been an artist-in-residence at Zaratan, McKenzie Gibson Studios in Rhode Island, Stove Works in Tennessee, Art House San Clemente, and has an upcoming session at The Wassaic Project in Upstate New York.

‘Backlot’ is generously funded through the Weave A Dream grant from the City of Savannah.

Flush, 2024, Spring Break Art Show LA

Hyperallergic review here

Flush, curated by Thomas Martinez Pilnik, is a two-booth exhibition with work by Janet Loren Hill, Taylor Lee Nicholson, and Marianna Peragallo that invites visitors into two wildly contrasting spaces. One is an indoor public bathroom, dank and filled with the trappings of private moments and public awkwardness. The other is a reimagined Garden of Eden, overgrown uncanny imitations of nature, and the sublime. During the run-of-show, visitors will be asked to leave behind their dreams, desires, fears, and anxieties in the form of graffiti in the bathroom. Flush disregards the line between what is real and what is not, and instead presents a fever dream of the imagination.

To flush is to discard, to get rid of, and to forget. “Goodbye, Gretta the Goldfish!” But once she’s out of sight and down the drain, and your face - now flush with sadness, embarrassment, and grief - has cooled off, where do we all then go? In our present reality, we are uninterested in what’s next unless it gives us an advantage. But where does the goldfish go? Where does our anger lead? Flush insists that easing on down these Yellow Brick Roads - whether the ones from The Wiz or The Wizard of Oz - offers us more insight, truth, and understanding than just holding ourselves to the phrase “out of sight, out of mind.”

Marianna Peragallo’s sculptures recontextualize peripheral domestic objects. The objects she recreates subvert expectations imposed on them by humorously misbehaving and resigning from their assigned roles, blurring the real and surreal. Items like garbage bags, plastic shopping bags, and rubber gloves are repurposed as vessels that nurture and sustain the growth of houseplants, while faux flowers role-play as lamps. Her sculptures say, “Have a Nice Day, but don’t overlook us or you’ll misunderstand what it means to be human.”

Taylor Lee Nicholson’s work cries, “Touch me, Feel me, Eat me!” But don’t get too close (come closer!) lest you discover the trash inside. Their installations, filled with ‘bloom-down-cheek’d peaches’, apricots, cigarettes, and strawberries, culminate in grand gestures of opulence and excess, but in fact, reveal the discarded remnants of a life richly lived and poorly treated. Like Snow White’s Wicked Witch, Nicholson is lurking in the woods offering you a sweet, juicy apple - but be warned, all is not as it seems.

Janet Loren Hill offers up a heaping bowl of propaganda coded beneath rich and ripe iconographies. Her sculptures and paintings point toward memories of the outdoors and external scenes but dive deep into the roots of internal ideologies. Burning beneath Hill’s spectacular vistas, rolling hills, and medieval party tricks are rotting teeth, violent flowers, and the false intimacy of a binocular peering right at you.

Thomas Martinez Pilnik finds peace in the haptic memory of shag carpets, the kind that crawled up bathtubs in pink São Paulo apartments and harbored mold as the bidet splashed into their fibers. His work combines this softness with the critical coldness yet carefully crafted qualities embedded within ceramics. Though the works tell personal stories, his narratives unravel across broader political, social, and civil histories.

Together, these artists create work that is cute, saccharine, and appealing from afar and so invites people in. Once lured, the audience is asked to reflect on something darker and, in turn, is offered something that feels more like the truth. As is often the case, the inside is where the truth lies even though the outside can be a sweeter space. Flush is an invitation to let yourself be deceived. To fall into a delicious and delightful trap. Of course, open your eyes and see - but, more importantly, open your mind and feel.

Thank You, Have A Nice Day

On view from February 1 - March 14, 2024

Oresman Gallery at Smith College, Hillyer Hall, Room L14, 22 Elm Street Northampton, MA

Marianna Peragallo is a Brazilian-American artist based in New York City. She creates anthropomorphic sculptures of everyday objects that are designed for human consumption and disposal, but reconceives them to humorously misbehave, subverting their assigned roles. The works on view focus on the plastic takeout bags which are ubiquitous in many city’s visual landscapes. Peragallo collects bags from walks around her neighborhood and from errands made in New York and São Paulo, and uses them as materials in her sculptures. Plastic bags frequently scoot down sidewalks helplessly with a gust of wind, their handles flailing like arms. To Peragallo, they are symbols of consumerist waste and reflections of human experiences, such as feeling overworked, overlooked, playful, grateful, etc.

The most recent work in the exhibition, Volte Sempre (Come Back Often), was made with a bag that once contained two lunch pastéis from a São Paulo street market – the last meal Peragallo shared with her late grandmother. The bag’s deconstructed state removes its operational intent but makes it a monument to common, yet cherished moments. Other works incorporate a more humorous view of the bags, such as a video titled Good Girl Gone Bag which shows a plastic bag twirling around the leg of a park bench. Visual cues from the city are also reflected in the freestanding sculptures, their stands loosely inspired by the raised metal waste baskets commonly found outside homes in São Paulo.

Several bag sculptures are containers for pothos plants, making us collaborators in sustaining new life. This shifts the dynamic away from consumption to care. Pothos are common houseplants that, in many contexts, are considered weeds. They are resilient, growing against all odds in poor conditions, and will thrive with care in supportive settings. Each sculpture, expressing a multitude of emotions and gestures, speaks to the potential for acceptance, care, and love for even the most peripheral things.

Best Cult

Spring/Break Art Show 2023

Best Cult is an exhibition that offers a reimagination of church in service of our queer utopia. In response to the Hearsay::Heresy theme, we have fashioned a love letter to our queer chosen family to oppose the blasphemous anti-trans bills and queer disenfranchisement that are spreading across the country. The queer agenda–heresy according to the far right–is alive and thriving in this exhibition. The six artists in the show have become an inseparable family, bonded by their identities as misfit queerdos, trans-girlies, thembos, bi-femmes, and fire sun signs. It is within this sacred space that we create and share our artwork. Throughout history, heretical religious altars, steeped in Christo-fascist ideology, have continuously failed us. By engaging in queer iconoclasm, we aim to cultivate safe havens for future generations, where refuge, sanctuary, and abundant life can be found.

At the heart of this exhibition lies our playful reinterpretation of the Altar of Ghent, a revered symbol of the transition from the Medieval Ages to the Renaissance. This masterpiece has been subject to numerous thefts and hijackings throughout history, from the Reformation era to the concealment ordered by Hitler during WWII. Remarkably, the bottom left panel of the Ghent Altarpiece remains missing to this day. In response, we have crafted/altered our own Ghent Altarpiece, lovingly referred to as the Ghunt Altarpiece (pronounced Kuhnt). With this altar, we dismiss evangelicalism to establish a new kind of church that prioritizes community, playfulness, and the celebration of queer joy.

The mother of this cult, Marianna Peragallo, creates anthropomorphic sculptures that re-contextualize everyday domestic objects, granting them the agency to transcend their assigned roles and subvert the expectations imposed upon them. Michelle Girardello's 'Emotional Furniture' series also challenges preconceived beliefs, redefining home outside the confines of trauma. Shannon Stovall scrutinizes the culturally constructed notion of gender and identity, exploring the intricate personas we create to navigate and understand our sense of self. Jay Elizondo harnesses her personal journey to create artworks that provoke visceral encounters with the trans body. In her video work, Dulce Lamarca questions assumptions and transforms them through humor and ridicule into a different way of seeing and ultimately of being in the world. Finally, the femme father of the cult, Zac Thompson aka Zacrilegious, playfully expands normative structures around home, family, and gender through drawing and photography that centers their chosen family of queers.

Over the past six years, these artists have supported each other through all of life's ups and downs, from birthdays and weddings to breakups, deaths, and apartment moves. Together, they embrace the inherent queerness that resides within them and courageously choose to be visibly queer, joyously heretical, and unapologetically out.

Ai Que Coisa Feia (Oh What An Ugly Thing)

Artwork by Marianna Peragallo and Thomas Martinez Pilnik

February 15-19, 2023

Ai Que Coisa Feia is a common Brazilian exclamation that means, “ugh, what an ugly thing!” In this two-person exhibition, the artists have simulated domestic objects and spaces to foreground that which is peripheral, swept under the rug, and forgotten as an ugly thing. Both artists are Brazilian, with Pilnik coming from the UK and Peragallo from the US, and draw from their diasporic upbringing to create surreal, deeply personal objects that complicate the nostalgia for home or country.

The titular exclamation can come from a place of love, just as much as it can show disgust, which perfectly encapsulates the relationship the artists have with the promised perfection of golden ages. In recent years, we have experienced many promises of a renaissance. For the right wing in America, Brazil, Britain, and beyond, there is a longing for “before,” a time that is perceived as peaceful because oppression reigned supreme. Societies are neater and less complex when bodies, behaviors, and binaries are controlled. Nuance and diversity are messier and require complexity. This exhibition misbehaves by favoring exaggerated and uncanny gestures seen in bright-red cartoon lips, oversized cigarettes, snake-ish hoses, and slouching trash bags.

The works play with the distortion of Renaissance ideals: stretched and elongated figures, unstable compositions, and precarious, irrational settings that offer an unreliable utopia. In Ai Que Coisa Feia, the innocence of a childhood game of snakes and ladders becomes a platform to reflect on political corruption and familial infidelity. A garden hose and trash bag, often invisible in our spaces, become their own vessels for transformation and growth.

Marianna Peragallo’s sculptures are anthropomorphic domestic objects that often get taken for granted. In response to the collective burnout that resulted from the last several years, these objects have resigned from their intended purpose to serve a different function or to simply exist for themselves. The works also embody the cross-sections of love, labor, endurance, and support. Love is often mischaracterized as being non-essential and saccharine. However, it is a radical act rooted in strength and mutual support. It needs to be learned and cultivated, much like the living plants that have been planted in her sculptures.

Thomas Martinez Pilnik finds peace in the haptic memory of shag carpets, the kind that crawled up bathtubs in pink São Paulo apartments and harbored mold as the bidet splashed into their fibers. His work combines this softness with the critical coldness yet carefully crafted qualities embedded within ceramics. Though the works tell personal stories–embodying the feeling of grandma’s sharp and loving nails, her aging yet still warm hands, the permanent harm mixed with addictive pleasure in her secondhand cigarette smoke, and the love found in mum’s harsh words–the narratives unravel across broader political, social, and civil histories.

Together, Peragallo and Pilnik make a space that is simultaneously lush, strange, and cheeky. This fraught household brims with the familiar, seducing you to come close enough to discover a darker underbelly within the grips of loving hands. They hope their mothers will visit the exhibition and respond with, Ai Que Coisa Feia!

*Poster design by Gabe Camarano

Home Grown

October 15 - November 15, 2022

Winston’s Los Angeles is pleased to present Home Grown, an exhibition of anthropomorphic sculptures by New York-based artist, Marianna Peragallo. Working primarily with resin, apoxie clay, polymer clay, and oil paint, Marianna’s work depicts common objects found in everyday life. In response to the collective burnout that resulted from the pandemic, these objects have resigned from their intended purpose to serve a different function. Additionally, some objects have rejected the idea of perpetual usefulness and now do nothing at all.

The works also embody the cross-sections of love, labor, endurance, and support. Love is often mischaracterized as being non-essential and saccharine. However, it is a radical act rooted in strength and mutual support. It needs to be learned and cultivated, much like the living plants that have been rehomed in several sculptures on view.

Although the sculptures address the emotion of languishing, there is a playfulness in the duality of the works. For example, Hose and Dripping Hose are hoses that can no longer be used for irrigation but can be homes for plants. Under Over II is a toilet paper roll that has fed itself back into the wall so that it can’t be used by people and only exists for itself. Hefty is a trash bag that is slouchy and overstuffed but is housing a thriving anthurium plant instead of our waste. Each object, expressing a simple gesture, speaks to the potential for acceptance, care, and love for even the most peripheral things.

Green House

Work by Beverly Acha, Genevieve Lowe, Marianna Peragallo, and Hanna Washburn

Curated by Marianna Peragallo and Hanna Washburn for Spring Break Art Fair 2022

Green House is a group show exploring how we care for our environment and each other. The four exhibiting artists employ distinct visual languages to alter familiar imagery from the natural world. The artworks in Green House are in the process of growing and changing: lengthening forms and gesturing limbs. These surreal and dreamlike works show the absurdity of continuing to destroy the environment that nurtures and shelters us.

Seeking respite in the natural landscape is a persistent impulse, even while we continue to contribute to its collapse. Traditional, peaceful pastoral scenes are discarded in favor of exaggerated shapes, colors, and forms, reflecting our perspectives as we currently sit at the intersection of several devastating public health and environmental crises. This exhibition draws visual and thematic inspiration from other projects grappling with these ideas. The disarming charm of beloved childhood classics, Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree and Bill Kroyer's Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest, have taught us the power of coexistent playfulness and emotional impact.

We are also inspired by the slippages between body, nature, and home in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Rashid Johnson's greenery sculptures, Marie Howe's poem "SinguIarity," and AnnihiIation, both the text by Jeff Vander Meer and the film by Alex Garland. In many respects, our project is also aligned with the emergence of Late Renaissance Mannerism, which involved the distortion of Renaissance ideals: stretched and elongated figures, unstable compositions, and precarious, irrational settings. We feel the presence of uncanny Mannerist figures and environments in Green House, which offers a distorted and often unsettling version of "reality."

As said in the NAKED LUNCH description: "Renaissances tend towards a happy return to Golden Ages before them"-but where do you go after the Renaissance? These days, "turning back the clock" and returning to a happier, more fruitful time no longer seems like an option. What does it mean, then, to look forward? Can our future still have space for play, tenderness, and even joy? Together, these artists build a collaborative space that is lush, dynamic, and strange. This exhibition animates earthly spaces and beings because our environment is not simply a backdrop, it is alive: growing, reaching, nurturing, and hurting.

Organs Without Bodies

JENNY KEMP • MARIANNA PERAGALLO

APRIL 2 – MAY 8, 2022

Transmitter is pleased to present Organs Without Bodies—a two person exhibition of work by Jenny Kemp and Marianna Peragallo.

With an acute level of humor, labor, and self-awareness, this exhibition takes a cheeky approach to the concept of “a body without organs,” an unconstrained potential of a freely operating body. The French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari adopted the term “Body without Organs” to act as a metaphor for a large range of ideas pertaining to how we understand limitations, potentiality and interdependent relationships. Playing off of this complex and manifold concept, the artworks presented suggest attempts at breaking through conventional limitations—visual and otherwise—to explore the undulating, organic, imperfect nature of existence.

The artworks in this show operate on the periphery of the human body. Through the lens of our anatomical, messy, breathing lives, we observe these pieces living on the edge between figuration and abstraction, and the sentient vs. the inanimate. These sculptures and paintings suggest a level of animation as they test the boundaries for how we decipher the non-human or beyond human.

Kemp’s paintings are sly, nuanced expressions of the tension that lies between linear boundaries and oozing, undulating growth. Repetitions of linear forms combine and intersect to imply movement, rhythm and teeming energies.

Similarly, Peragallo’s sculptures reject their assigned purpose—a pillow enjoying a smoke-break (tired of being a literal object of support), a ladder lounging (evocative of a bather at the beach). Instead, they seem to challenge our expectations for how we understand what is “humane” and what are “human-made” objects. They enjoy a resignation from assigned-operation, as if their newfound autonomy allows for a rejection of purpose.

Both artists explore a freewheeling approach to our expectations for how objects, abstractions, and colors operate. Their gestures bend toward the surreal, evoking an awareness of humor, growth, rhythm, and time.

Installation for the Haunted Mill at Wassaic Projects, October 2019, 22 x 30 x 20 feet

Installation of collages, sculptures, animation, and interactive sculptures. Approximately 17 x 8 x 9 feet.

paper collages, paper clay sculptures, gouache, plywood, monitor, vinyl, polymer clay, velour, 8 x 17 x 9 feet