Leah Dixon: Sky on the Floor

January 9 - February 1

A solo presentation of work by Leah Dixon

Organized by Alex Hammond

Opening reception January 9, 6-8pm

Press Release

The tension between machine precision and the elegant sensitivity of the human mind-body is central to the empathic friction that electrifies Leah Dixon’s practice. Her work references the geometries of late-capitalist apex power – from the Twin Towers to Stealth Bombers to the never-ending fall of the Holy Roman Empire. She insists on scaling these forms to her own body. Dixon constructs with her body, and refines with her hands – often reaching for a hand saw before the power version that she also owns. She applies filler with a finger to square the corners of her precisely-edged sculptures. Dixon’s work reminds us that abstractions such as capitalism, religion, standardization, money, and the urban grid are all generated by our biological minds’ tangle of firing neurons. 

For her solo show at Underdonk, Dixon pairs her floor-laid American War Rugs with the verticality of towers and ceremonial monoliths nestled in fabricated wreckage. In doing so, she brings home the complications of empire and invasion, translating woven wool into hand-cut yoga mat, and destroyed architecture’s vaporized steel and concrete into plywood, drywall, and house paint. 

The collapse of architecture and space is referenced directly in Dixon’s process of building and performatively destroying Twin Towers that she hand-fabricates at the scale of the human body. Her sculptures disintegrate time as they reach into art history and prehistory – equally calling forth Minimalist cubes, devotional architecture, and Neolithic standing stones. Likewise, Dixon’s floor sculptures connect objects of late capitalist, commercialized wellness culture (yoga mats) to war rugs made by Afghan women starting in the 1980s that depict airplanes, bombs, guns and scenes of war between the Soviets and the Mujahideen. American weapons were later depicted when the US  War on Terror ensued – a dishonest and shapeshifting set of actions that Dixon feels has bookended her life thus far as an American millennial. 

Through her striking geometries, Dixon pairs objects of feminized body regulation with the aggression of American Imperialism. In her pop update of the Afghan war rugs, her American War Rugs playfully render imagery of discord and breaking architectures. In Dixon’s artistic commentary, the same extractive capitalism that drives war also mandates that spiritual practice, such as contemporary yoga, be tethered to the market, which sells obsession with the self and bodily perfection as a means of transcendence.

By surfacing these relationships, the artist weaves herself into the global fray. She is a Westerner who draws inspiration from both contemporary architecture, and from the creative production of unnamed Central Asian women, often refugees of war, who over time, geared their work to Western audiences that marveled at its politicized subject matter. Dixon’s awareness of these complexities speaks to her intimacy with our infinite entanglement. She at once builds and separates shapes from their origins – encompassing endless connections from our deep time to our recent past, and installs them into our now.

Leah Dixon (lives and works in Lower Manhattan, New York City) is an Interdisciplinary Artist and alternative architect, working in sculpture, installation, painting, and nightlife. Her often life-size work narrates spaces where bodies and architecture collide. Dixon’s de-Constructivist / Folk sculptures rearrange material narrative complexities – igniting a shared and ancient geometric imagination. Dixon’s work has been exhibited and reviewed globally. Highlights include a recent solo exhibition at Guadalajara90210 gallery in Mexico City, The Goethe Institut New York, Local1 Mexico City, The Nicaraguan Biennial of Contemporary Art, and group exhibitions with Gordon Robichaux NY, The Austrian Cultural Forum in Berlin, Edel Assanti London, and many others. Dixon holds a MFA from The School of Visual Arts, a BFA from The Ohio State University, and was a fellowship recipient at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In combination with her studio practice, Dixon is the founder / builder / curator / and co-owner of BEVERLY’S – An Arts and Nightlife Institution, and social architecture project in Downtown NYC, which happens to be headquartered downstairs from this gallery. @leahelizabethdixon  /  LeahDixonArt.com

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