TEMPEST GALLERY | Rockella Space

TEMPEST GALLERY @ ONE EYED STUDIOS:

Upcoming Exhibition

WITCHGRASS: A Group Exhibition

EXTENDED UNTIL JANUARY 25TH, 2025

Tempest Gallery at One Eyed Studios is pleased to present WITCHGRASS, a group exhibition of local fiber artists on view from December 13th through January 11th, 2025. WITCHGRASS explores resilience, tenacity, plasticity, grafting, blending, harmonizing, and thriving in textiles and paint.

WITCHGRASS

Works by Yasmeen Abdallah, Amy Greco, Rose Malenfant, Taraneh Mosadegh, and Defne Tutus.

December 13th- January 11th, 2025

Opening Reception: December 13th, 6-9pm

TEMPEST Gallery @ ONE EYED STUDIOS,

1639 Centre St,

Studio 179,

Ridgewood, Queens, 11385.

Enter via Weirfield St

347 668 8411

Regular gallery hours are Wednesday-Saturday, 1-6pm. TEMPEST is open to scheduled visits outside of regular hours, please direct message us on Instagram @tempest.gallery

Far afield, on the outer fringes, grows a weed. Scarred and falling apart, its leaves are in tatters. But the seedling dusts itself off, soaks in the world and continues to grow; lucid, composed and decisive. Eventually mended, her fibers grow strong, exuberant and beautiful.

Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder–

If you hate me so much
don’t bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything–

as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
one enemy–

I’m not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning

whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion–

It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.

I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

Louise Glück

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Yasmeen Abdallah draws from the personal and the political through elements of memory, trauma, resilience, and persistence, Yasmeen Abdallah (she/her/they/them) unravels ephemera, aftermaths, and the stories told and secrets kept by imprints and objects that speak to our contemporary culture. Referencing her Levantine lineage through magic carpets, intimate weaving, and needle art practices, Abdallah seeks to create safe, mobile spaces to replace the ones being destroyed by occupying forces. These works reveal the gaping holes in bureaucratic systems that cruelly and catastrophically fail humanity. Through a myriad of gestures stemming from underpinnings of an exquisite corpse, she views the threaded needle as a tool of solidarity to rip through borders, unravel fictive allegories, and heal holes in tender hearts of the broken and abandoned. Abdallah believes that through acts of care, a more regenerative, nurturing, and equitable society emerges in which all is/are valued. Abdallah holds Bachelor’s degrees from University of Massachusetts in Anthropology (emphasis in Historical & Collaborative Archaeology, which included field schools with New England indigenous tribal communities); and another in Studio Art with honors, including a Minor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Abdallah also earned a MFA in Fine Arts with distinction from Pratt Institute. Her work as an artist, curator, writer, and educator has included roles as a visiting artist, lecturer, grant recipient and resident at numerous institutions in and around New York.

 

Amy Greco (she/her) is a visual artist working with textile art. Her work is an intuitive process that utilizes the labor-intensive, ancestral tradition of knitting to tell stories of growth culminating in abstract structural tapestries and wall hangings. Using natural fibers and metals and growing via patterns reminiscent of sacred geometry, these creations mimic nature’s vital expansion simultaneously on a cellular, embryonic level and on the scale of the universe. Her work asserts an affirmation of life, exploring themes of interconnection, rupture and repair. Amy earned a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Archeological Studies from Oberlin College and a Masters of Social Work from Hunter College. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Breathwork Mastery Practitioner in Training, and textile jewelry designer. She lives and works in Brooklyn where she is raising two daughters, playing music in a band with her partner, and working full-time as a school social worker at City-As-School High School in Manhattan. She has been a scholarship recipient at the Haystack Mountain and Penland Schools of Craft

 

Rose Malenfant is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator and curator  from New York, based in Brooklyn. Her sculptural practice is material and process oriented, centered in cycles of the body and environment. Rose uses a variety of techniques and materials including nylon pantyhose, bioplastic, silicone, gravity and time. Rose is an artist in residence of the Textile Art Center AIR cycle 16 (Fall 2024). Her work has been exhibited by galleries throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens including El Barrio Art Space, Atlantic Gallery,  and the Factory LIC. She has received awards from The Art Students League of New York and the International Society of Experimental Artists. Rose continues to invest in her practice with the Textile Study Group of New York and The Alternative Art School.

Rose was a recipient of Beam Center’s Artist in Residency Program on Governors Island, New York 2022 where she continues to work as a project designer mentoring young artists through hands-on, collaborative projects. Rose has curated several notable exhibitions, including “Semi-Permeable” at Living Skin, Brooklyn, New York and “Propagation- Suspended Roots” at Studio 9D New York, New York

 

Taraneh Mosadegh (b. 1985, Tehran) is an Iranian artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MFA in painting from the Leroy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland, and her BFA in painting from the Art University of Tehran. Mossadegh’s recent collections explore stillness and movement on canvas. Through patterns, gradations, and shades of light, she investigates how subtle shifts in light and pigmentation evoke emotional and spatial depth. Her practice is attuned to the interplay between texture, color, and light, considering binaries of the ephemeral and the permanent. Part of Mossadegh’s practice involves collaborations with artists across various disciplines, including poets, visual artists, sound artists, and performers. These interdisciplinary engagements allow her to expand the boundaries of her work, creating a dynamic exchange between different modes of creative expression. Her pieces are part of notable collections, including the Musée d’Arte Moderne de Paris and the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Mossadegh engages with contemporary dialogues on painting, studying the connections between sensory experience and conceptual inquiry.

 

Defne Tutus is an artist, writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her B.A. in Art History from Tufts University. She also studied fashion design at FIT, fiber art and metal working at SVA and participated for many semesters in NYC Crit Club. She has shown her work with ArteEast Artist Spotlight, Deanna Evans Projects flat files, Latchkey Gallery, Studio 9D, Living Skin, Lagoon New York, ChaShaMa space, SVA, Copeland Gallery in London and ABC No Rio. She is a co-founder of art and literary journal Passing Notes and artist-run gallery TEMPEST in Ridgewood, Queens

ABOUT TEMPEST GALLERY

 

At TEMPEST, we want to talk about art in a maelstrom. We invite artists to be unafraid to broach difficult conversations and address colonial structures of violence through their practice in textiles, sculpture and installation. Our main desire is that each monthly show present layered themes where multiple cultural references intersect and tussle.

Launched in 2024, Tempest Gallery is located at Rockella Space’s One Eyed Studios in Ridgewood, Queens. Through our programming and events, we aim to create community and a space for gathering, presenting work and building relationships.

Please visit us at 1642 Weirfield Street, Ridgewood Queens, NY, during our regular gallery hours Wednesday-Saturday, 1-6pm.

We are open to scheduled visits outside of regular hours, please direct message us on instagram