±
Rain
June 6—July 11, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, June 6, 6 - 8 pm
Rain (detail), 2025. Mixed media installation with collaborative sound.
Painting: Eric Heist, Maze, 2025. 44 x 44 inches, ink and ash on canvas. Installation: Kazumi Tanaka, Table, 2025. h 45 ½ x w 70 ½ x d 24”, mixed media.
Ulterior Gallery is pleased to present Rain by ± a collaborative project by the artist duo Eric Heist and Kazumi Tanaka. This exhibition debuts their vision, developed out of their studios in upstate New York, where they share a space for creative discourse. The opening reception will take place on Friday, June 6, from 6 to 8 pm.
My recent work incorporates the skulls of land animals and sea creatures’ shells into sound-producing sculptures– a visceral, sensory connection to the natural world. By placing my worktable with Eric’s maze painting, the room transforms into a psychological space connecting the outer world with the created sound space.
When I look at a line of pine trees in front of a bank of fog, I can see a clear order, but when the fog lifts the clarity disappears. Returning to moments of that clarity through names, numbers, and colors recall the ephemeral nature of our connection to the unseen. Over the hills, we can go into the cool shady pine forest where we find animal bones here and there.
There is evidence of a natural cycle in the aftermath of coyote feasting on deer or other small animals. At night, we hear their howls echoing through the trees. The existence of deer upstate is serene as the fog, their gentle figures emerging suddenly. Sometimes they pause to gaze at us, assessing whether we are a threat, their eyes seeing through to our bones.
When I was in grade school, I made mazes to pass to other students– an intimacy made possible through games. The maze I made in relation to the natural objects on the table represents the connection between us and the natural world.
—± (Heist & Tanaka)
Eric Heist (b. 1962, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) explores the complexities that lie between the individual and the collective. Recent exhibitions include New Discretions, 76 Bowery, NYC, Dox Centre, Prague, Czech Republic, Kanal Pompidou, Brussels, Belgium, Galerie Bernhard, Zurich, John Marchant Gallery, Brighton, England, Galveston Artist Residency, Galveston, Texas, and Keisjers Konig, Dallas. Heist was represented by Schroeder Romero in New York 1998-2008. He directed Momenta Art, a not for profit exhibition organization, 1986- 2016. He has taught at New York University, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and The Cooper Union in New York. A collaboration with artist Genesis P-Orridge titled Candy Factory that began in 1999 employs Polaroid images taken by P-Orridge with silkscreens by Heist. He received a Pollock Krasner Award in 2020 and a New York Foundation of the Arts award in 2003.
Kazumi Tanaka (b.1962, Osaka, Japan) graduated from Osaka University of Arts in 1985 and moved to New York in 1987, studying sculpture at the New York Studio School until 1990. A recipient of a 2017 Tiffany Foundation Grant and a 2022 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. She has attended residencies at McDowell (2015), Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2014) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1990). Tanaka exhibits at museums and galleries internationally including Fridman Gallery, Beacon, NY (2022, solo); Kunming Art Biennale, Yunnan Art Museum, Yunnan, China (2018); Miyauchi Foundation, Hiroshima, Japan (2015); Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA (2014, solo); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2002); the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME (1997); the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1996, 1993 solo), and represented by Kent Gallery, New York, NY 1995 through 2003. Tanaka’s work is currently on view in Believers: Artists and Shakers, February through August 2025 at the ICA Boston, MA.