Exhibition Review: "Places & Spaces: Curated by Emann Odufu" at Friedrichs Pontone Gallery, Tribeca (September 5 - 28, 2025)

Kiyomi Quinn Taylor (American, b. 1995), Group Obituary, 1974, 2021, oil, acrylic, felt, fabric, colored pencil, watercolor, paper on dyed linen. 40 x 60 in. / 101.6 x 152.4 cm. Image courtesy of Friedrichs Pontone Gallery.

By LIAM OTERO October 11, 2025

Exhibition Link

Curator Emann Odufu's recent exhibition was a magnificent curatorial tour-de-force that intentionally challenges, broadens, and enhances precisely what the concepts of "space" and "place" emblematize. These two terms are both literal constructs and deeply abstract terms that are routine facets of our day-to-day lexicon, perhaps even more so in art-speak to describe style, form, or content. Yet, Odufu's straightforward exhibition title, Places & Spaces, does much more than provide a visual definition for how these ideas are articulated or represented in art.

Rather, the artists and their works open up a new kind of visual discourse that are considerate of the open-endedness behind what "space" and "place" signify. A skill that does not get mentioned enough for what makes a great curator is pure imagination, which Odufu clearly embraced as he dove headfirst into assembling an impressive range of artists - both established and emerging - working across painting, sculpture, photography, collage, video game design, film, textile, and installation. Make no mistake that that conceptual broadness of works is tempered by an astute, carefully thought out curatorial schema that took around a year to plan, which helped to maintain a cohesiveness between the art while simultaneously upholding the exhibition's methodological integrity.

Installation view of Places & Spaces exhibition at Friedrichs Pontone Gallery, Tribeca.

History is a topic mined by many contemporary artists as a sort of place through which to reclaim narratives that have been lost or distorted as a casualty to the whole premise of "history is written by the victors". Critical fabulation, a theoretical idea coined by historian Saidiya Hartman that involves a combination of fictive storytelling and archival materials to provide visibility on marginalized subjects, underpins a few of the works in this show. Symbolic reclamation of cultural identity is probed in the postcolonialist works of Guyanese artist Suchitra Mattai through her insertion of saris as a formalist dethroning of white European colonialism.

Nigerian artist Dennis Osadebe's acrylic paintings capture the duality of tradition / modernity in Contemporary Africa through the symmetrical presence of twin women donning traditional African masks while wearing contemporary clothing as two strings or wires connect to a centrally placed talismanic figure (again, rendered in a traditional style akin to African sculptures one may find in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art). This tension between past and present seems to indicate the precarious position Africa has been placed - geographically and conceptually - in the midst of post-colonialist legacies, neo-colonialist contemporaneity, and ongoing absorption of economic, cultural, and political influences from within and beyond the continent.

William Buchina (American, b. 1978), Effects of a Well-Timed Gift, 2024, acrylic, ink balsa wood, board in wooden box. 24 x 39 x 5 1/2 in. / 61 x 100.3 x 14 cm. Image courtesy of Friedrichs Pontone Gallery.

That discussion on the historical / ahistorical undercurrents behind a few of these works makes for a smooth segue into storytelling as an end in itself to engage with space and place. William Buchina's Effects of a Well-Timed Gift (2024) is a multi-layered, ostentatiously detailed miniature theatrical stage set contained in a wooden box that is a menagerie of strange characters, contradictory-coexisting environments, and industrial objects & waste within a proscenium structure. Edgar Cano's Chrome Dance (Swallow Me Earth) (2022 - 2024) is a rhythmic movement between three women bathed in shades of absinthe green, neon yellow, and cadmium red that wields something of the figurative ambiguity and play on perspective similar to some of Dorothea Tanning's paintings from the 1970s; beacuse of its nearly lifelike scale, you cannot help but feel as though you could easily become swiftly invited into the cavorting fray.

Simon Fernandes (Brazilian, b. 1982), How to Move Dunes and Remove Fortresses, 2025, interactive game installation. Edition of 5. Image courtesy of Friedrichs Pontone Gallery.

There is also an exploration of physical space and places beyond the confines of the two-dimensional picture plan and fixed image. Simon Fernandes's videogame How to Move Dunes and Remove Fortresses (2025) asks of the viewer to become a participant by navigating a land-bound blue jellyfish across an open world comprising a jagged, rocky landscape of barren dunes and occasional encounters with the open sea and mysterious portals that lead to other parts of the preprogrammed game map. Ivan Forde's mixed media cyanotype paintings cannot be approached singly, but rather as a collective unit of narrative sequentialism whose psychedelically dreamy surfaces read like the hieroglyphs of an Egyptian sarcophagus or the cavernous wall paintings in an Etruscan funereal chamber.

It was unquestionable that collage would enter into the discussion for its inherent challenging of figure-ground relationships between the application of varied materials and manipulated surfaces. Delano Dunn's collages, some of which appear in vertically-oriented diamond shaped plexiglass, are largely about directionality as seen in figures who look as though they were fleeing from gargantuan aquatic monsters (sharp, planar bands of color serve as a navigational tool in following the movements of the figures). Meanwhile, Laurie Simmons is more illusory with her minimalist collages of nude women in domestic spaces through which a process of layered imagery, resin, and miniscule wooden sculptures (such as a chair) raise questions on the issues of perception versus reality, or nature versus artifice. These boxy tableaus that are small in scale also raise the issue of voyeurism and the male gaze as seeing these feels less like an act of looking, but more so of snooping or peeping.

Laurie Simmons (American, b. 1949), Color Pictures / Deep Photos (Staircase / Orange Wall / Chair), 2007 - 2022, ink jet, resin, wood. 13 x 10 3/4 x 3 in. / 33 x 27.3 x 7.6 cm. Image courtesy of Friedrichs Pontone Gallery.

I think something could be said, too, of the exhibition itself being a meta-commentary on place and space. Senegalese sculptor Pap Souleye Fall's freestanding figure, LAST REG (2025), has been likened by the curator to a sort of god, demigod, or guardian that is protective of the show in its totality. I couldn't agree more as the Atlantean figure's coral pink body, comprising a panoply of found objects and materials, not only wields a commanding presence in the center of the gallery, but quite literally illustrates the infinitesimal connections between the works seen in its rod-like limbs that jut out of its body in every conceivable direction. LAST REG could aptly be described as the nucleus for the cell of this exhibition.

Pap Souleye Fall (Senegalese, b. 1994), LAST REG, 2025, found material, textile, red background paper. 96 x 40 x 32 in. / 243.8 x 101.6 x 81.3 cm. Image courtesy of Friedrichs Pontone Gallery.

Emann Odufu's comprehensive exploration of space and place is exceptionally nuanced, yet it maintains a steady flow. Considering the breadth of artists and mediums represented, Odufu did not fall into the trap of overreaching or over-broadening the scope of this exhibition, as I have seen my share of exhibitions that were too ambitious in bringing in far-too varied selections of works that caused the show's narrative to collapse in on itself. Not so with Odufu, for he wisely strategized the types works and sub-themes that also left much room for open interpretation by the audience. Furthermore, the incorporation of such diverse mediums spread across the ground and basement-level galleries speaks to the ever-changing nature of how galleries as spaces and places are evolving the display and explication of art. WM