Time Capsule

November 22, 2019–January 12, 2020 / CulturalDC, Mobile Arts / Washington, DC

For part one of the Time Capsule exhibition, Wickerham & Lomax begin an examination of the spirit with which the American public confronts the American Dream.

The referencing of the entrepreneur and the creative existing in contemporary Baltimore has been positioned under a subversive lens which draws from aspects of American portraiture.

How does one render success? The artist’s answer is presenting their images in a square aspect ratio common to the iconic Instagram post. Models are dressed in a t-shirt collection and manipulated suits, the regalia of casual, corporate America. Images are framed in motifs associated with the presidential, the hustler, the commodity and the fictional—asking the viewer what archetype they embody.

“Velks Reflect/ Child Birth,” the poem present in the space as an introduction to a published collection, centers around an alien couple visiting contemporary America as tourists. They disagreed with the practices of their former home world, but eventually carve out a space for themselves in America.

The proposition isn’t a survey of America as a whole but a stylistic gesture about negotiating the artist’s space in a continually morphing conversation.