Amid/In WNY 2024

Opening Reception
Friday, January 12, 2024, 7:00 pm

Exhibition continues through February 23

Curated by Kyle Butler & John Massier

Amid/In WNY 2024 features artwork by Paul Brandwein, Bree Gilliam, Deborah Hill, Jacob Kedzierski, Ruby Merritt, Joshua Nickerson, and Maggie Parks.

From 2015 to 2017, Hallwalls presented a series of eight regional group exhibitions under the over-arching rubric of Amid/In Western New York, a coy allusion to a multi-venue biennial from the previous decade called Beyond/In Western New York. Where Beyond/In was anchored by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, helming a group of galleries, museums, and curators from Buffalo to Lewiston, Amid/In was decidedly low-fidelity. Humble curators poking their noses into over 200 artists' studios and exhibiting the work of 78 artists across all media. Five years after that final group exhibition, the project was revived with Amid/In WNY 2022 and continues this year with Amid/in WNY 2024.

Fresh gig of studio visits and snap judgments. As was the case in the original project, we obeyed no theme and pursued no specific logic outside of what we found interesting, an iconoclastic collection of weird gestures and curious choices. As Hallwalls Visual Arts Curator John Massier explains:

"We've segued into Amid/In becoming an annual exhibition based not only on our ongoing interest in the artists of our local community, but the rapidly changing complexion of our community of artists. It's always a good idea to take the temperature of a given scene and while our project has never claimed to be comprehensive, we have relied on its immediacy—what does a given artist have going on RIGHT NOW?

"It's always satisfying for us to go 'themeless' and merely select what we love. Invariably, formal and material connections rise up as works find themselves sharing the same gallery space. At the same time, it's good to survey the scene with diverse approaches—from printmaking-inspired drawings to sculptures incorporating drywall to oddball ceramic pieces, among others—and see works that spring from highly iconoclastic and individual motivations. We really want to showcase those tendencies."