Diedrick Brackens

A colonnade follows the entry hallway to Diedrick Brackens’s “the shape of survival,” his solo exhibition here. Four columns on each side lead to one suspended tapestry, birth of humility, 2024, made from cotton and acrylic yarn. It depicts an array of pigs, whose overlapping forms fade from blue to red. In their midst, two silhouetted figures embrace as they lean away from one another. Their faces are thrust skyward, like a pair of waves cresting in unison. Placed higher than any other weaving in the show (and the only one that hangs from the ceiling), the piece is an ominous cloud, visible from every corner of the gallery. The artist’s presentation is ruled by this sea of pigs.

Despite occupying this place of power, however, the swine do not appear in any of the other works on view. But what we do see are more human silhouettes, placed into settings of natural abundance. In a pond, a promise, a prayer, 2025, a figure floats in water while a double helix of catfish swims around them. In synonyms for risk, 2024, two people sit behind a bush of brugmansia, or angel’s trumpets, their hands blindly rummaging through the foliage in search of the flowers. In the prince of cups, 2023, someone is stacking jars in what appears to be a storehouse. Provisions, perhaps, for an inevitable winter or an impending calamity.

These scenes of fecundity offer no combative resistance to the tyranny of the pigs—in fact, they pay them no mind. Maybe this is because searching for beauty in a world of horror, as Brackens seems to suggest, is a necessary form of survival.