GENERAL CONDITIONS

Press Release

GENERAL CONDITIONS
The School | Jack Shainman Gallery
25 Broad Street, Kinderhook, NY
May 17 – November 29, 2025

Public reception on Saturday, May 17th from 1–6PM

PRESS RELEASE

Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present GENERAL CONDITIONS at The School from May 17-November 29, 2025. Bringing together work by over two dozen artists working across a wide range of media and at scales both intimate and grand, the exhibition offers a sustained reflection on the social and political climate of our time by considering how we respond—individually and collectively—when many of the most basic components of public life can no longer be taken for granted.

As artist Alina Tenser notes, the idea of ‘general conditions’ “resonates on multiple registers, all sinister but vague. In the world of construction, the term holds power precisely because of its evasiveness, allowing those in control to shift goalposts in ways that serve their interests. Its ambiguity makes it nearly impossible for the opposing or disadvantaged side to challenge, negotiate or fully grasp the terms at play. This dynamic eerily mirrors the structural changes we’re witnessing in federal policy, where language and bureaucracy are weaponized to obscure, justify and enable horrific systemic shifts. In both cases, the lack of clear definition breeds a sense of injustice and impending doom, leaving those affected with no firm ground on which to push back.” With social stability seeming to be an ideal of the past and civic norms disappearing by the day, the artists in this exhibition provide us with a bevy of new strategies for thinking about and confronting the crisis of ‘general conditions’ felt by us all.

While each of the works in GENERAL CONDITIONS stands as vivid expressions and bold aesthetic statements in their own regard, many cohere around recurring themes. For example, Richard Mosse’s Heat Map photographs examine the control and exploitation of refugees and migrants as they attempt to move safely across borders. Using a military-grade telephoto camera that can detect thermal radiation, including body heat, across great distances, Mosse documented refugee camps and staging sites, seeing them as landscapes of human displacement where millions struggle for survival.

Displacement is a theme that Hayv Kahraman also considers in her multimedia works on paper, linen and flax fiber. Her pieces regularly show fragmented or disembodied pairs of eyes set within spacious compositions or, in others, hanging from the branches of trees that remain defiant within their fragile landscapes. For Kahraman, the disembodiment that her works figurally express serves as a metaphor for the psyche of refugees forced to flee their homes. Kahraman understands this experience personally, having first fled her native country of Iraq and again, more recently, as a result of having to evacuate her home and studio due to the recent wildfires in Los Angeles.

With Utah’s West Desert as both setting and subject, Jaclyn Wright combines original and archival photographs with regional maps and elements of performance to show the impact of late capitalism and settler colonization on the landscapes of the Western United States. Her photographs are composites of historical and contemporary imagery that investigate the codification of the natural world by state officials and business interests alike. Working with mediums and techniques such as, tapestry, embroidery and photograms, Shannon Bool regularly explores how hierarchy is embedded into historical narratives and their visual expressions. In his large-scale and often allegorical paintings that look to the histories of religion and the cosmos alike, Carlos Vega likewise explores the hidden structures of social life and the meanings embedded within them.

Many of the works in GENERAL CONDITIONS express moments of personal defiance and solidarity against the systems of oppression that, by keeping people in positions of uncertainty and even desperation, try to maintain a status quo of injustice and inequity. Gordon Parks’ photographs of Black communities in a still-segregated South show individuals navigating politically fraught circumstances with resolution and grace. The multi-directional colored wooden planes that Emanoel Araújo arranges in his sculpture compositions take a rigid and geometric frame as their background before transcending it through their formal expressivity. Working at a comparatively monumental scale, Rose B. Simpson’s ceramic and mixed-media sculptures of worldly yet ethereal figures, just recently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, are specific expressions of the artist’s ancestry and cultural heritage that also uphold the value of the human spirit.

What the variety and complexity of the works in GENERAL CONDITIONS demonstrates is that no single approach for understanding the present historical conjuncture will do. Instead, these artists provide multiple strategies that we can use to better interpret, represent and hopefully seize control of the conditions around us.

Featured artists include: El Anatsui, Emanoel Araújo, Shimon Attie, Shannon Bool, Diedrick Brackens, Yoan Capote, Geoffrey Chadsey, Ifeyinwa Joy Chiamonwu, Gehard Demetz, Pierre Dorion, Donyel Ivy-Royal, Hayv Kahraman, Jesse Krimes, Deborah Luster, Richard Mosse, Adi Nes, Jackie Nickerson, Gordon Parks, Mary Ann Peters, Kenny Rivero, Rose B. Simpson, Paul Anthony Smith, Becky Suss, Alina Tenser, Carlos Vega, Charisse Pearlina Weston, Deb Willis, Jaclyn Wright, and Elizabeth Zvonar.