Carpenter's Gothic
Victor Bengtsson, Richard Dial, Mónica Mays, Nils Alix-Tabeling, Rosie Lee Tompkins

September 6 - October 19, 2024

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“Maybe those are the things that you want to get away from. Maybe those are the things that will eat you alive... Because this fiction’s all your own, because you’ve spent your entire life at it, who you are and who you were when everything was possible, when you said that everything was still the way it was going to be no matter how badly we twist it around first chance we get and then make up a past to account for it.”

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Someday is happy to announce "Carpenter’s Gothic," featuring works by Victor Bengtsson, Richard Dial, Mónica Mays, Nils Alix-Tabeling and Rosie Lee Tompkins.

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Carpenter’s gothic architecture is characterized by the adaptation of gothic revival elements, usually realized in everyday materials like wood rather than stone or iron. The genre was popularized in the late 19th century in response to an abundance of North American timber and the rise of vernacular architecture. These factors allowed for the mass production of intricate moldings and the quick construction of houses - a literal facade born from industrial innovation. In his 1985 novel by the same name, William Gaddis uses carpenter’s gothic as a metaphor for the complexity, cacophony, and cyclicality of modern life. Set in a “classic piece of Hudson River carpenter’s gothic” described as “a patchwork of conceits, borrowings, deceptions; a hodgepodge of good intentions like one last ridiculous effort at something worth doing,” his character’s repeatedly attempt, and fail, to communicate and understand one another - sometimes by purposeful deception, but more often just the reality of linguistic limitation and the increasingly image and noise saturated quality of domestic life. Trapping both the characters and the reader inside the house for the duration of the novel, Gaddis exploits a sense of claustrophobia while exploring themes of illusion, authenticity, adaptation, and entropy.

 

This exhibition reflects both the aesthetic and allegorical connotations of carpenter’s gothic. With distinct media and methods, the artists each display a unique approach to craftsmanship while blurring temporal and geographic specificity. Victor Bengtsson’s paintings fuse motifs from Greek mythology, medical history, modern scientific illustrations, and Christian iconography. His technique mimics Medieval tapestries with undiluted oils and imitation gold leaf, giving his works a muted, light-faded appearance that accentuates their historical referents. Richard Dial’s anthropomorphic, iron-wrought structures reflect years of expertise acquired as a machinist in Alabama, as well as generational knowledge passed down in his family. Melding elements of design, traditional artisanship, industrial production, and fine art, Dial’s sculptures “give new life to the dead metaphors of chair legs and arms at the same time that they transform these seats into personifications of tradition.” Rosie Lee Tompkins’s meticulous quilts reimagine the improvisational quilt-making tradition with highly skilled inventiveness. Her works incorporate colorful scraps, faux furs, printed fabrics, flags, and secondhand clothing, often sourced from the proliferating flea markets of the 70s and 80s. Weaving and stitching these materials into vibrant systems of painterly craftsmanship, Tompkins fuses art historical references from abstraction, cubism, expressionism, and pop art into something new. Mónica Mays’s sculptures combine archival research with everyday and biological materials, altering familiar objects through processes of undomestication. Her “Shadow Box” series uses bombyx mori moths, usually burned for industrial silk production, allowing them to become carpenters of their own homes inside taxonomy boxes and challenging the viewer's perception of material authenticity and transmutation. Nils Alix-Tabeling’s surreal sculptures evoke pagan systems of ecological interconnectedness, embracing the unknown through semi-recognizable wooden and metal objects combined with natural elements. Informed by the methods and material mastery of Medieval alchemy, he produces strange hybrids of the animate, insentient, and machine-made, honoring the fluid identities of his creations.

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Together, the works blend traditional techniques with contemporary perspectives to prompt introspection on themes of authenticity and adaptation. By transforming everyday objects and historical referents through processes that defy their original function, the works reimagine utility and meaning while eliciting a sense of ecologic, conceptual, and spiritual connectedness.

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Victor Bengtsson (born 1997 Copenhagen, Denmark) lives and works in Copenhagen. He studied fine arts at the Vera School of Art and Design and the Krabbesholm Højskole before he began training to become a doctor at the University of Copenhagen. Recent solo exhibitions include The Gardener’s Son, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels, Belgium (2023); and Proscenium, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil (2021). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at eastcontemporary Gallery, Entrevaux, France (2021) and the Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2020).

 

Richard Dial (born 1955 Bessemer, Alabama) lives and works in Alabama. In 1984, amidst the closure of the Pullman Standard Company factory where he worked for much of his life, Richard Dial and his brother Dan established Dial Metal Patterns. There, he began making his metal art objects, leading to the production of his first “comfort” chair series in 1987-89. His work has been included in museum shows and gallery exhibitions across the United States, including Everyday Love, Institute 193, Lexington, KY (2024); Living Legacies: Art of the African American South, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (2022); History Refused to Die, Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Mobile, AL (2015); Stories of Community: Self-Taught Art from the Hill Collection, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA (2004); Testimony: Vernacular Art of the African American South: The Ronald and June Shelp Collection, Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo, MI (2004); Southern Spirit: The Hill Collection, Museum of Art, Tallahassee, FL (2000); Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South, Michael C. Carlos Museum at City Hall East (1996); Wrestling with History: A Celebration of African American Self-Taught Artists from the Collection of Ronald and June Shelp, Baruch College, CUNY, New York (1996)

 

Mónica Mays (born 1990 Madrid, Spain) lives and works in Amsterdam. Having studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of New Orleans, she graduated Cum Laude from the École Superieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg in 2015 and received an MA from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2017. She has developed projects in artistic residencies such as Rupert, Vilnius; Fundación Bilbao Arte, Bilbao, Spain; Matadero, Madrid, Spain; Cemeti Institut for Art and Society, Jakarta. Her works have been exhibited in spaces such as the Frascati Theater, Amsterdam, Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn; Punt WG, Amsterdam; Blue Velvet Projects, Zurich; Centro Centro, Madrid; KUBUS, Hannover; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Industra, Brno; Atelier Chiffonier, Dijon, France. She has been awarded the 3PD prize bestowed by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts 2022, the Mondriaan Fonds Young Artist Stipendium 2023, and the Generation 2022 prize from the Montemadrid Foundation.

 

Nils Alix-Tabeling (born 1991 Paris, France) lives and works in Montargis, France. He studied Fine Arts at the Academy La Cambre, Brussels (BA, 2014) and at the Royal College of Art, London (MA, 2016). His work has been included in international exhibitions, most recently including Fleur de peau, terre à vif, Le Parvis, Tarbes, France (2023); Planet B: Climate Change & the New Sublime, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Palazzo Bollani, Venice, Italy (2022); Futur, Ancien, Fugitif, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2019); Le Bétyle d'Ail, Art Space, London, UK (2019). As an artist curator, he organized exhibitions at Mécènes du Sud, Montpellier, France (2021); Galerie Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf (2019) and Galerie Nadine Feront, Brussels, Belgium (2017).

 

Rosie Lee Tompkins (born 1936 Arkansas, died 2003 Richmond, California) lived and worked in San Francisco Bay Area. Her work was part of museum shows across the United States, including: Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective, BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA (2020-2021); Yo-Yos & Half Squares: Contemporary California Quilts, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA (2016); Something Pertaining to God: The Patchwork Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins, National Museum of Women In Arts, Washington, DC (2008); Shelburne Museum, Vermont, (2007); Whitney Biennial 2002, Whitney Museum of American Art, (2002); Solo show at the BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA (1997); Who'd A Thought It: Improvisation in African-American Quiltmaking, San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, San Francisco, CA (1987). 

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