When You Waked Up the Buffalo

Los Angeles

Isabelle Albuquerque / Stefania Batoeva / Olivia Erlanger / Grant Foster / Shahla K. Friberg / Matthias Garcia / Devin B. Johnson / Larry Madrigal / Nicolette Mishkan / Katherina Olschbaur / Shaan Syed / Hugo Wilson / curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler

July 18 – August 22, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

When You Waked Up the Buffalo
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

Isabelle Albuquerque
Orgy For Ten People In One Body: 3, 2020
walnut
30.43 x 8.51 x 5.84 in
77.3 x 21.6 x 14.8 cm
Ed. 1 of 3 + AP

Isabelle Albuquerque
Orgy For Ten People In One Body: 3, 2020
(alternate view)

Isabelle Albuquerque
Orgy For Ten People In One Body: 3, 2020
(detail view)

Isabelle Albuquerque
Orgy For Ten People In One Body: 3, 2020
(detail view)

Isabelle Albuquerque
Orgy For Ten People In One Body: 3, 2020
(detail view)

Isabelle Albuquerque
Orgy For Ten People In One Body: 3, 2020
(scale view)

Stefania Batoeva
H I, 2020
oil on canvas
126 x 70.9 in
320 x 180 cm

Stefania Batoeva
M, 2020
oil on canvas
126 x 70.9 in
320 x 180 cm

Olivia Erlanger
Roseville, 2020
plexiglass, architectural model, urethane resin, disband, lichen, charcoal, wood, acrylic paint, artificial snow #15
45 x 30 x 30 in
114 x 76 x 76 cm

Olivia Erlanger
Roseville, 2020
(alternate view)

Olivia Erlanger
Roseville, 2020
(detail view)

Grant Foster
Untitled, 2014
distemper on canvas
18 x 14 in
45.7 x 35.5 cm

Grant Foster
The North Star, 2015
distemper on canvas
18 x 14 in
45.7 x 35.5 cm

Matthias Garcia
Facetime, 2020
oil and acrylic on canvas
21.25 x 25.5 in
54 x 65 cm

Shahla K. Friberg
Dripform, 2020
glass, lead free solder, copper foil
63 x 32 x 25 in
160 x 81.25 x 63.5 cm
 

Shahla K. Friberg
Dolly, 2020
glass, lead-free solder, and copper foil
36 x 27 x 24 in
91.5 x 68.5 x 61 cm

Devin B. Johnson Black Rock Senegal Nicodim

Devin B. Johnson
The Rocks Took Ahold of My Soul, 2020
oil, oil stick, and spray on linen
60 x 62 in
152.5 x 157.5 cm

Devin B. Johnson
A Shade of Dakar Green, 2020
oil on paper
12.5 x 9 in
31.75 x 22.8 cm

Devin B. Johnson
Dakar Than Blue, 2020
oil on paper
12.5 x 9 in
31.75 x 22.8 cm

Devin B. Johnson
Two Rosy Cheeks, 2020
oil on paper
12.5 x 9 in
31.75 x 22.8 cm

Devin B. Johnson
Untitled (Sketch Collage), 2020
oil on paper
9 x 12.5 in
22.8 x 31.75 cm

Larry Madrigal Nicodim

Larry Madrigal
At the End of the Day, 2019
oil on canvas
72 x 60 in
182.9 x 152.4 cm

Nicolette Mishkan
Sashimi, 2020
oil on canvas
63 x 54 in
160 x 137.2 cm

Katherina Olschbaur Nicodim

Katherina Olschbaur
The Rebel Angels, 2020
oil on canvas
78.75 x 78.75 in
200 x 200 cm

Katherina Olschbaur
Chroma Lisa, 2020
oil on canvas
23.6 x 19.7 in
60 x 50 cm

Shaan Syed
Stage Right (Dark Green Horizontal with Single Downward Swipe), 2014
oil on canvas
83.8 x 78 in
213 x 198 cm

Hugo Wilson Sculpture Nicodim Bronze

Hugo Wilson
Untitled, 2019
bronze
Ed. 3 of 3 + AP
37.5 x 43.25 x 36.25 in
95 x 110 x 92 cm

Press Release

I was asleep when you waked up the buffalo.

Kenneth Koch, “Buffalo Days,” 1960.

 

The metronome of our collective circadian rhythm is off. The surreality of every waking moment calls to question whether we’ve ever been awake at all, or if we’ve ever slept. Evolutions and revolutions that have been brewing for centuries come full-circle within the blink of an eye, but did they really, if we blinked when they occurred? When You Waked Up the Buffalo is a compass for alternative art histories—the worlds that happen when one oversleeps, or the hallucinations of an insomniac—everyday realities that become nonsensical with the softest pinch.

 

When You Waked Up the Buffalo is a timeline that begins, ends, or in-betweens (depending on when one waked up and which direction she’s walking) with a Big Bang of abstract and emergent figures and forms. Stefania Batoeva’s hard brushstrokes collide into one another and tectonically generate a reclining form upon which what appears to be a chair is seated. Shahla K. Friberg’s stained-glass stalagmites reflect and refract light across the room, alter its form, and toy with its dimensions, while Grant Foster channels Magritte in the feminine abstract. Hugo Wilson’s ethereal bronze stampede springs forth from Shaan Syed’s elegant, layered wave, or perhaps it is summoned by Katherina Olschbaur’s orgy of angels. Wilson’s violent origin story gives way to Olivia Erlanger’s suburbia in a snowglobe, casting the viewer as omnipotent spectator, while Matthias Garcia’s protagonist projects herself back under glass via Facetime

The figures are full now, their bodies tangible: a loosely-rendered woman carefully toes the line of her existence on an oceanfront in Devin B. Johnson’s stitched-together linen surface; Isabelle Albuquerque’s headless, solid walnut form calls to mind ancient Grecian relics, or represents a manual for a more practical scale of human; Nicolette Mishkan’s levitating mermaid pulls her severed body together from an impossible desert swamp. 


At the End of the Day, Larry Madrigal’s painting, provides a lovingly banal retort to the anarchy in the foreground. The subject’s exposed testicles appear to posit the question: were you asleep when the buffalo waked, and was it all a dream?