B Sides
flowers for my friends
Jake Boggs, Dhehee Lee, Kalani Largusa,
Nick Schleicher, and Shawn Spangler
Curated by Nick Schleicher
MONACO
St. Louis, MO
April 15th-May 22nd 2022
B Sides - flowers for my friends celebrates communion of covalent artistic practices that have been bound by shared history, maintained by a mutual commitment to aesthetic pursuits, and fostered by deep friendships. The initial exhibition flowers for my friends was organized in 2019 by Kalani Largusa at Aupuni Space in Hawaii. It marked the convergence of four individual artistic practices: ceramicist Jake Boggs and three painters, Kalani Largusa, Dhehee Lee, and Nick Schleicher. With the addition of fellow ceramicist Shawn Spangler, B Sides further explores the nebulous act of creating, refined through years of conversations centered around abstraction, representation, mark making, ontology, the primacy of material, and the interplay between presence and absence.
Both the original show and B Sides - flowers for my friends highlight undercurrents that develop, consciously or subconsciously, as independent practices merge and diverge. This fluid exchange mimics the pattern of movement between the artists themselves, at various points sharing physical space with one another: from school in Chicago, to studios in Hawaii, to calls that span multiple countries. This continued discourse produces varied outcomes as the work functions distinctly, yet harmoniously, to exemplify the motivations of making and elucidate the empathetic core of artistic endeavors.
Photographed by Kalaija Mallery
Courtesy of Good Art Doc
Exhibition poster by Sam Balmer