2/32
Winona Sloane Odette & Mitchell Kehe

Winona Sloane Odette’s sculptures and Mitchell Kehe’s paintings that make up the two- person exhibition 2/32 seem to be actively incubating, mutating, digesting, and recycling.

One of Odette’s sculptural installations sits directly on the floor, forming a signal chain of items – a pink sewn hamper, a Bakelite infant feeding dish and guitar pedal enclosures treated with starch and wood glue. Audio cables fashioned from industrial felt cord create linkages from one object to the next, implying sound without emitting any, plugging into the walls at either end – they too process the signal. With each subsequent connection, the designated purpose of the next item is rerouted, mutually conditioned by its neighbors toward a new, unnamed collective purpose. Another sculpture, a stuffed bear, looks on from the corner, its unique monochrome pink color at odds with its familiar shape pummeled in starch crochet snowflakes.

Three of Odette’s sculptures occupy the largest room, establishing new networks out of disparate materials ranging from wool fibers, lead crystal, sheepskin, and plush toys. Splayed on a suite of spartan leather cushions, a stuffed animal patchworked from real and well-worn faux fur appears to be shapeshifting between possible iterations. A vacant bed has a cache of peanut butter jars, wool and manmade fibers, and crystals built directly into its perimeter – a way to keep sustaining elements within reach. A grouping of inverted crystal bowls and Ugg Boots huddle together nearby, offering abstract glimpses of the handmade and manufactured Pokémon plush toys inside. The faceted surface of the glass reduces them to inscrutable pops of color and detail.

Kehe’s paintings center on amorphous motifs that emerge from fluid surroundings, seeming to plumb unseen depths beneath the surface. Familiar and ambiguous, the vaguely organic shapes invite multiple readings with no definitive solution. Painted on synthetic fabrics, Kehe allows their signs of wear, patterning, and prominent texture to selectively show through. Two paintings incorporate the same gray graphic print, reminiscent of counterfeit monogram logos or wallpaper. Layers of acrylic and oil paint, enamels, adhesives and other materials build up varying degrees of transparency, pressure and smoothness. Each layer acts as a filter, reconditioning what came before.

A shaped stage occupies the last room, held aloft by a small-wheeled structure – a toddler walker. The floating stage is wrapped in a brown gray felt, the platform’s proportions correspond to the room’s polygonal shape, absorbing most of the space and pushing viewers to the perimeter. In the previous century film theorists often wrote that we went to the movies to sit with other people, alone in the darkness, lost in our desire and searching for some imagined sense of home. The writer Guy Davenport described the imagination as a “drunk man who lost his watch, and must get drunk to find it again.” Perhaps Dorothy, in her quest out of Oz, should have followed Davenport’s advice. Maybe that’s not so different from what actually happens in the movie. As the Surrealist poet Paul Eluard wrote in the same year of The Wizard of Oz’s release, “There is another world, but it is in this one.” 

Renee Delosh

Winona Sloane Odette (b. 1998, USA) lives and works in New York. Solo and group exhibitions include: Subsong (2023) at April April, New York; fuckgirl collapse (2023) at Room 3557, Los Angeles; Anything can pass before the eyes of a person (2023) at Derosia, New York; The Disappearing City (2023) at CASTLE, Los Angeles. Special projects include : AUGUST 2023 (with K.R.M. Mooney) (2023) at Veronica, Washington; radial (with K.R.M. Mooney) (2023) at Progetto, Lecce.

Mitchell Kehe (b. 1984, USA) lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions include: Sourdough (2024) at Galerie Khoshbakht, Cologne; The wheel turns (2023) at Edouard Montassut, Paris; The Difference Between Building and Growth (2023) at Weiss Falk, Basel; Who’s the Best at Believing (2021) and All the World’s Organs (2019) at 15 Orient, New York. Group exhibitions include: An Excessive Ellipse, a Sort of Distribution (2023) at Hollybush Gardens, London; Jahresgaben (2022) at The Wig, Berlin; Reassembly (2021) at Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm.