Structures

These works pay homage to shotgun houses, barns, and other types of vernacular architecture built throughout Southern rural landscapes, and function as portraits of their inhabitants. 

David L. Johnson removes and refashions spikes, standpipes, and other elements designed to prevent people from sitting and lying down in public. By repurposing into art what is known as hostile architecture (for its targeting of houseless populations), Johnson interrogates the control of public space. 

These compositions also evoke architecture that he encountered in Egypt and throughout Europe and the Mediterranean basin. In works such as Untitled, the rectangles and squares recall the bricks used to build pyramids of Giza, the Pantheon, and other colossal structures of antiquity. 

Lipstick Building belongs to a series of sculptural works in which the artist used braided synthetic hair to interpret eighteen landmark buildings in New York and Benin. With this series, Gaba considers the cultural significance shared between iconic architectural feats and hair braiding around the globe. 

Kori Newkirk uses pony beads—a material used for braided hairstyles and one that serves as a recurring material in the artist's practice—to recreate Manhattan's skyline, offering a view of skyscrapers as seen from Newkirk's childhood in the Bronx.

Mavis Pusey's abstract prints and paintings drew inspiration from New York City's cityscape and bustling construction activity. In Dissolution of X, a cascade of rectangles varying in wood and brick-like textures recalls building materials found at a construction site, a fixture of everyday city life.