Odessa Straub
SEPTEMBER is excited to present *Moltings*, a solo booth with Odessa Straub. Straub will include new sculptures that flank the walls and drape from rafter to floor. In addition, she has created works on paper and canvas that correlate to her sculptures through shape and content.
Straub begins with sourcing and collecting materials, some of which have been in her possession for years and others acquired from online sites, thrift stores, junk yards and discarded refuse. Her searching and selection process is as intensive- and playful- as her making. Once accumulated, Straub’s objects are disassembled, reconfigured, and connected to perform the mutual function of suspending a vessel. Employing physics, Straub humorously subverts her objects to render them useful. Using the Walstad Method of planting, Straub layers soil, gravel, and water in each vessel to sustain submerged flora.
Straub’s evocative sculptures are bodily and performative. Each work is a character embodying a particular role that intermingles sexual play with the often-misperceived role of caregiving. Toying with this possibly uncomfortable intersection, Straub challenges assumptions around power and empathy. She sidles up to the edges of taboo and tension, positioning care as the focal tenet through which to examine connection, sexuality and sexualization.
For Straub, the manifestation of each work is a form of molting: moving through discarded or shed personas that no longer serve her. Many of the objects themselves are from her past and bare signs of exhaustive use. Purging items that had been connected to her body and home, Straub transforms them into functional parts of a new whole. She physically persuades materials to behave at their limits- bound, hung, stretched and tied together in suspended action. For Straub, this behavior is linked to survival, being individually pushed to breaking points and collectively sustained in support.
For further information, please contact kristen@septembergallery.com, or visit septembergallery.com.
Odessa Straub (b. 1989 Brooklyn, NY) received her BFA from The Cooper Union. Solo exhibitions include Odessa Straub with Jeffrey Stark, NADA (Miami, FL), Puss Palace Panic Room, Cooper Cole (Toronto, Canada), Migrating Contents, ALAC (Los Angeles, CA), Tennis Elbow, The Journal Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Real Puss Technologies, and There’s my chair I put it there, SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY), Odessa Straub, NADA, (New York, NY), Tears in Housebreaking Letting the Gold, Acappella (Napoli, Italy), Necrotizing Woos, Jeffrey Stark (New York, NY), Seasonings on Precipice Perception, Mier Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). Two and three-person exhibitions include Jaywalkers: Eddie Martinez, Rafael Delacruz, and Odessa Straub, Loyal Gallery (Stockholm, Switzerland), Viewing Room: Agathe Snow and Odessa Straub, Marlborough Contemporary (Chelsea, NY). Group exhibitions include Well/Being, University at Albany Art Museum (2021); Earthly, College of St Rose (Albany, NY); American Women, curated by Marie Maertens, La Patinoire Royale (Brussels, Belgium); Untitled, As It Stands (Los Angeles, CA); Yellow, SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY); Inflatable Dolls, Women’s History Museum at Springsteen Gallery (Baltimore, MD); Peanuts, Eighteen Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark); NADA, Cooper Cole (Miami, FL); Simili Stone, organized by Jacques Vidal, LA KAJAE (Brooklyn, NY); night walk, Inman Gallery (Houston, TX); Summerfest, curated by Lauren Taschen, Max Hetzler (Berlin, Germany); Fresh Cuts, Eric Firestone (Hamptons, NY); Blue Jean Baby, SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY); Perfect Present: Three Generations of Painting, Jeffrey Stark (New York, NY); Present Conditional, Mier, (Los Angeles, CA); That’s The Neighbor, Always Dressing These Boulders In The Yard, The Suzanne Geiss Company (New York, NY). Her zine, published by innen (Zürich, Switzerland, 2019), is carried by Printed Matter. Select recent press includes Artforum Critics' Pick and The Brooklyn Rail Review. She was an artist-in-residence (2019-2021) at Art Cake (Brooklyn, NY). Odessa Straub lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
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