Lora Robertson & Kevin Draper - Satellite Collective Tribeca Art Show at Mriya Gallery (May 8 - May 18, 2025)

Installation view of Lora Robertson & Kevin Draper - Satellite Collective Tribeca Art Show at Mriya Gallery (May 8 - May 18, 2025)

By LIAM OTERO May 31, 2025

The prolific Satellite Collective organized a thought-provoking exhibition at Tribeca’s Mriya Gallery on the nature of violence and destruction in contemporary American society by focusing on the works of two artists who split their time between New York and Michigan: Lora Robertson and Kevin Draper.

Kevin Draper (b. 1967) is an artist whose rural Michigan roots played an influential role in his artistic trajectory. As a state whose culture espoused a contradictory ethos of “religion and guns”, Draper probes how violence has become a disturbing facet of everyday life, both from a civilian and militaristic perspective.

 Kevin Draper (American, b. 1967), Drone, 2025, remote control drone with alcohol engine

Immediately upon entering the gallery, one is confronted by two frontally-facing life-sized sculptures of the nude male body … except these are anything but idealized representations - arms are missing, the top half of the heads are chopped off, and torsos are severed from their waists. The deleterious consequences of war was a theme that sprung to mind as this had me contemplating the painfully timeless truth of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “War is hell” quote with regard to the horrifying dismemberment of civilians and soldiers in combat zones (or, sadly, even in non-militarized countries). Behind these two sculptures were a pair of miniature combat planes that looked like the real-life manifestations of the painted airplanes of Malcolm Morley (British-American, 1931 - 2018). The vehicle as a dual symbol of speed and destruction puts Draper in an interesting position in Art History as the Italian Futurists of the early-20th Century also investigated similar themes in the years preceding the First World War (a real motorcycle was even included on a nearby plinth).

Kevin Draper (America, b. 1967), Dominant Landscape, 2025, oil-based printing ink on vinyl canvas

Elsewhere, Draper’s aggressively-scaled maximalist abstract print featuring thick strips of red, blue, and black paint surrounded by swaths of white negative space occupied an entire section of the gallery wall. The jarring use of color here - the patriotic red-white-blue scheme (except for black) - was such a fascinating abstract take on the in-your-face, guns-ablaze patriotism that has taken hold of the American psyche.

Lora Robertson (American, b. 1971), The Drink That Goes With The Bread, 2025, dye sublimation on aluminum

Lora Robertson (American, b. 1971), Shock Wave, 2025, dye sublimation on aluminum

Lora Robertson’s (b. 1971) time-lapse photos of a Molotov cocktail’s explosion evoked the famous Alfred Hitchcock concept of the “bomb under the table” in which the viewer is nervously aware of what the outcome will be, in this case, detonation. The sequence begins with the ignition before proceeding to a strangely beautiful lapse of the shattered green glass and crisp embers caught in mid-air that ends with what’s left of the smoldering remains. Though Molotov cocktails have been used toward egregious ends, Robertson’s version considers the role these makeshift weapons played in acts of resistance towards oppressive power systems. The placement of the Molotov cocktail over a discarded 19th Century sewing table also introduces an element of female agency as her art has long focused on women’s rights.  

Lora Robertson (American, b. 1971), Maybe, If He Were an Itinerant Laborer, 'Drinker, and Fisherman, 2025, bronze and found objects

She also created an entire series of mixed media assemblages in wooden boxes that continue this theme, with interrelated forays into Catholicism, female anatomy, and shifting power dynamics. A grenade shares the same box as a bronze-cast sculpture of a reproductive organ - it goes without saying that this is probably the best sculptural equivalent to Barbara Kruger’s “Your body is a battleground” graphic.

During the exhibition’s opening night, a panel discussion was held with the artists, “Violence, Beauty, and Resistance vs. Societal Decay”, which was moderated by Christa Terry, the Arts & Culture editor of Observer. Each artist spoke in great detail about how their respective practices and personal histories inform their views, concerns, and hopes about the state of American socio-political discourse. Key themes that arose included feminism, the military industrial complex, and critiques of American exceptionalism. WM