At the Heart of the Matter, a solo exhibition by Judith G. Levy, on view through October 22, 2022 at Studios Inc

At the Heart of the Matter, a solo exhibition by Judith G. Levy, text by Joey Orr, Curator of Research The Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas.

At the Heart of the Matter is a solo exhibition of new work by artist Judith G. Levy. Throughout the exhibit, she wrestles with the heaviness of contemporary life, saturated by gender-based violence, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, ecological disaster, and the global pandemic. In the midst of seemingly ceaseless emergency, this exhibition stakes it claims on empathy, care, and a shared humanity. Like all forms of representation in her practice, the individual works are both real and metaphorical, playful and sincere. Using still and moving images and found objects, she moves across mediums, gently nudging visual and material cultures toward more compassionate horizons.

Levy depicts everyday objects as agents that reveal a shared human vulnerability. The front door acts as a threshold into the sanctity of home, while doubling as protection from the potential perils of the world beyond. The exhibit also reflects on the fluidity of global and local identities in a series of portraits photographed in simple, natural light. All of the participants are connected to the artist through trusted, word-of-mouth networks. Often dressed to reference their countries of origin, they cradle vegetable and fruits that are common, though not native to the United States. The series is a complex expression of immigration provoking viewers to consider their assumptions behind feelings of familiarity and difference. Old travel postcards are overpainted to reconstruct their locations, transformed by drought and flooding in present times and our not too distant futures. Through worn away landscapes and monuments, this work turns ironically on the souvenir’s inherent nostalgia for a lost world that was always predicated on the devaluation of lives and ecologies.

In the video work, Golem, she doubles herself, appearing as the golem she has made for her own protection. It is a magical story addressing a violent and persistent history. It also acknowledges something about her making. Ava Golem explains that the artist has made her because “she’s frightened and worried; she’s scared.” Instead of turning away from the exploitation and structural inequalities of the world, Levy intervenes, however briefly, into how their meanings are conveyed. At the Heart of the Matter emerges from a fraught contemporary moment, and since the exhibition cannot remake the world on its own, it imagines its repair.