Work by Rolland Miller and Zebadiah Keneally
2/18/23-3/19/23
In the British television series Fleabag, Kristen Scott Thomas’ character Belinda expounds the difference between how genders experience pain and how that impacts what they focus on respectively. She says: “Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth… We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives, men don’t.
They have to seek it out, they invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby.
We have it all going on in here inside, we have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the fucking menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world”
ROLAND MILLER (b.1987) is a Chicago-based artist and curator. He is a co-founder of Barely Fair and has been a co-director at Julius Caesar since graduating from SAIC’s MFA program in 2014. Recent exhibitions include The Suburban in Milwaukee, MONACO in St. Louis, along with HG, Fernway Gallery, Heaven Gallery, Triumph, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. His work for They Have to Seek It Out meanders from bodies inspired by action figures, to the bright colors of food advertising, and the fashion of catching rays. A beachgoer bathes under a glowing orb, a million atom bombs bursting in air. Another spray-paints faux radiation burns across their body. Both imbue their skin with an uneasy relationship between beauty and violence. Michelle Grabner writes Miller, “Critically [exploits] the images that clot our political and sexual imaginations.” Miller combines found objects with auto-fictional materials to create a liminal space for contemplating the American male figure – its construction, dissemination and consumption through pop culture.
ZEBADIAH KENEALLY (B. 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City, His drawings offset by painting, sculpture, video, performance and book projects. When asked to describe his work he says “lunch is very important”, and his intricate vignettes use metaphor, humor and symbolism to activate our capacity for connection, reflection, compassion and understanding. Zebadiah presented his first solo show in 2016 and has published his drawings with a long list of independent publishers. His work can also be found in the collections of the MOMA library, the Thomas J Watson LIbrary at the Metropolitan MUseum of Art and the New York Public Library Special Collections. Apartamento Magazine published Zebadiah’s debut graphic novel, All The Things I Know, in 2022.
