Weatherproof is excited to present Current, with new work from Jesse Benson, Alli Melanson, and Sara Yukiko. Concurrent exhibition posters from each artist will be available at the gallery.

A fool’s errand, one that can only be marked as such after the fact. One that can whiz right by you if you aren’t decisive enough, you can’t take back a flash in the pan. Although there is a difficulty to plot it, there hasn’t been any shortage of folks who have tried to make a profession out of attempting to put their finger on it. A corollary question now sprinkled: where are you going and to what end will you continue to walk? You will pass things on walls that are now irrelevant, numerous objects of all different sizes, in a chain of descending entities that is probably endless, bearing wheels that screech around a looped track you once spent afternoons afoot–‘turtles all the way down’—maybe army, maybe navy, time with a cataract does a number on you. In our vicarious medium, they withdrew from mutual contact, and encounter each other only as translations or caricatures. Walking here was nice but it was dark and mostly quiet save for the rattle of a week-sized suitcase past bins the color of ink in the light. That noise is awful, but maybe talking would have been better to cover it up and to stop the words from dissolving into a dream-like glow of TV static. It is important to keep moving even in the weakest of states. A hero’s journey in the moonlight. You whush on by, you begin to move fast and break things, sideswiping vehicles modified with USB sticks who’s many pings illuminate a path of where you have been, your suitcase rumbling on behind you now wearing a silver patina of collected marks. You make a turn and look over your shoulder to reveal a wake of negligent scuffs. Course correct. Feeling the need to progress and obligated to carry on the tradition, wobbling like Giacometti man your limbs quivering from the collateral damage, a fascist symmetry. You trudge on past the many bungalows in the night, if for no other reason than faith, guided by the tides to finally reach the shore. The many notes scrawled out mentally and the short monologues spoken into that dinky, whirring tape recorder are revealed to be obsolete now, basking in the presence of this evening’s newly selected destination. The house gorged down into the bowel of a ship not so much in illumination as in a sincere inability to know what was down, where your core went if you lost it momentarily or which path a pin would take dropping soundlessly into blue carpet. When you are given a room away from home how many times out of ten might it be a refuge?

///

Jesse Benson (b. 1978, Orange, CA) lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design and a BFA from Cal State University Long Beach, Select solo exhibitions include Organizer at as-is.la, Los Angeles (2023), You Are Someone I Can Tell My Secrets To at LOCKER, John Marshall High School, Los Angeles, (2020), and Miracle Grow at Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (2017). Recent group exhibitions include ASHES/ASHES, New York (2023), Night Gallery and as-is.la, Los Angeles (2021), Rita Urso/Artopia Gallery, Milan, Italy (2018) and Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles (2017).

Alli Melanson lives and works in Montréal. She holds an MFA from Concordia University (Montréal) and a BFA from OCAD University (Toronto). Solo exhibitions include 100 Bell Towers, Joe Project, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, and Chris Andrews (all Montréal). She has participated in group exhibitions at Cherry Hill (Cologne), Chris Andrews, Franz Kaka (Toronto) and Alyssa Davis (NYC). She will present a solo exhibition at Bonny Poon / Conditions (Toronto) in November, 2024.

Sara Yukiko (b. 1996, San Francisco, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in New York, New York. She graduated from UCLA with a BA in Design Media Arts in 2018. Solo and duo exhibitions include 11:11 at Gern en Regalia, New York (2022), Pirouette at Estrella Gallery, New York (2022) and Two Birds, One Stone at Gern en Regalia, New York (2020). Selected group exhibitions include Produit Rien, Montreal (2024); Art et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (2024); A.D., New York (2024); Brunette Coleman at Shoot the Lobster, New York (2023); and Entrance Gallery, New York (2022). Her upcoming solo exhibition, XO Show, at Gern en Regalia opens November 8.