BACKWARDS SHHHH
DANI (LEVENTHAL) RESTACK + SHEILAH (WILSON) RESTACK
DECEMBER 13, 2024 - JANUARY 25, 2025
GAA NEW YORK
Gaa is delighted to present Backwards Shhhh, a collaborative exhibition of works by Dani (Leventhal) ReStack and Sheilah (Wilson) ReStack. Including a selection of works on paper, a neon wall sculpture, and a video installation, Backwards Shhhh functions as a multifaceted offering that considers concepts of domesticity, sexuality, and femininity, and reveals the foils of freedom and fear that inherently accompany such experiences. Backwards Shhhh is the second collaborative exhibition by Dani ReStack and Sheilah ReStack with Gaa, and the first in the gallery’s Tribeca location.
Through the incorporation of a variety of traditional and found objects, materials, and imagery, the works across Backwards Shhhh legitimize manifold interpretations of their condition and being. Their universal, visual language acts as an invitation for excavation, exploration and an embodiment of feeling. Basking in the ruby red essence of I am a Mom, one enters a state of meditative reflection – complicated feelings of pride, joy, love, grief, shame, self-doubt, loneliness, independence, and agency rise to the surface. This light refuses to be contained, permeating the space and imparting its energy and influence on everything within its reach.
This profound influence of color continues across the series Etels Up Trap, each work abounding with a dynamism stemming from the conscious embrace of play and volatility. Black and white photographs – sewn onto the surface through a pattern of shapes and lines – subtly exist amidst a roiling sea of texture and color, gestural marks reminiscent of the makers’ hands teeming throughout. A collective effort between not only Dani and Sheilah ReStack, but also their daughter Sky, these pieces act as a visual journal, weaving a thread between one moment, place, or time, and another.
Similarly, 18 Wolves as Aides, a multi-part book and drawing by Dani ReStack including marks made by their eldest daughter Rose’s charcoal-coated feet dancing on the paper, presents a collage of photographs and text posing open-ended questions of what it means to be a mother or caretaker. How can one be responsible for another human, when one’s own wounds are so quick to surface? Oscillating between a general understanding and a personal experience, these works highlight shared struggles and achievements on both a macro and a micro level and underscore the ways in which imagery and ideas are disseminated globally and specifically.
The physical becomes fluid in the video Blood and Water for Forrest Bess, mundane household items such as pots, pans, bags, and bowls swaying in the translucence of a Nova Scotia bay, scattered at the base of a triangular shape created through the connection of the artists’ bodies. Resistant to stasis and defined by the single constant of change, the water embodies instability while simultaneously celebrating vulnerability. An undulating cloud of color saturates the frame, its vibrant red hue reminiscent of the neon light and evocative of blood.
Altogether, the works included in Backwards Shhhh expose and critique pervasive effects of gendered power dynamics, acting as a resolute reminder of the variations in mark, feeling and material that can be mediators of the desire and the conflict intrinsic to human relations.
Dani (Leventhal) Restack (b. 1972, Columbus, Ohio) is a multidisciplinary artist whose tactile videos and works on paper investigate sensorial and emotional states via juxtaposition and the intersection of individual stories. Drawing from her own life and the lives of those around her, Leventhal ReStack’s images are challenging, unnerving, and tender. Her work has been featured in screenings and exhibitions at the Camden Arts Centre, London, UK; Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands; NYFF Projections, New York, NY; Oberhausen , Germany; The Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, MY; UnionDocs; MoMA PS1, New York, NY; The Nightingale, Chicago, IL; Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY; and Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY. Leventhal ReStack is the recipient of a Wexner Film/Video Residency Award, the Kazuko Trust, the Eileen Maitland Award and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice Visual Arts Grant. In 2003 she received an MFA in sculpture from the University of Illinois at Chicago and in 2009 an MFA in film/video from Bard College. Her drawings are in the permanent collection of Yale University, the Museum of Modern Art, and others. Leventhal ReStack lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she is Professor of Drawing at The Ohio State University.
Sheilah (Wilson) Restack (b. 1975 Caribou River, Nova Scotia) is a visual artist whose work is a feminist investigation into photographic and moving images as one of the possible materials for imagining desire, motherhood, and queer family into the world. Wilson ReStack has exhibited her work nationally and internationally at Camden Arts Center, Columbus Museum of Art, and The British Museum among others. Awards include Nova Scotia Talent Trust recipient, Creative Capital Foundation Scholarship, Canada Council Travel Grant , Denison University Research Funding, Canada Council Project Grant, Howard Foundation Photography Grant, Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence, Union Docs Fellowship. Wilson ReStack’s work has been commissioned for the Museum of Fine Arts of Santa Fe, Balloon Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, OSU Urban Art Spaces, W(here) Festival in Pictou County, Columbia College Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, Ross Creek Center for the Arts, Confederation Arts Centre and others. She received a BFA from NSCAD University in 2003 and an MFA from Goldmiths College in 2004. Wilson ReStack lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she is an Associate Professor at Denison University.