‘The Second Body’
Noah Schneiderman, Loren Erdrich, Hanne Peeraer, Sonia Jia, Johanna Seidel, Fiona Finnegan
13th of March - 27th of April
“Every living thing has two bodies. To be an animal is to be in possession of a physical body, a body which can eat, drink and sleep; it is also to be embedded in a worldwide network of ecosystems. When every human body has an uncanny global presence, how do we live with ourselves?’
(The Second Body, Daisy Hildyard)
Daisy Hildyard opens her 2017 titular essay reflecting on the intellectual history of the link between humans and their natural surroundings. She refers to Christian scripture where God punishes the misdemeanour of men with plagues and floods, or Shakespeare in which natural phenomena (tempests, moving forests) are in effect of human acts. At the heart of her essay is the emphasis that humans can and do have a responsibility for things which may not bear us any tangible relation. Through various vignettes, Hildyard presents the fertile possibilities for our relationship with the natural world if we adopted a new kind of dualism, one which challenges the limitations of considering only what we can experience from our corporeal confines,. She presents the reader with a second, alternative body, a global presence which allows us to experience that which lies beyond what we can touch, smell, see or taste. Between these two beings, bodies and their surroundings bleed into one another as borders between entities break down and along with this, limited taxonomies.
Soho Revue is pleased to present ‘The Second Body,’ a group exhibition of paintings by Loren Erdrich, Hanne Peeraer, Sonia Jia, Noah Schneiderman, Johanna Seidel and Fiona Finnegan in which each artist adopts this slippery, flowing, unstable, coagulating mentality formally and metaphorically in their paintings. In this exhibition, the viewer is encouraged to imagine a world that expands beyond the constraints of time, scale and geography. For some of the artists, through their use of organic material their work formally mimics the landscapes and natural elements they describe. For the others, such as Johanna and Loren, these notions are explored through more lucid yet equally affecting images, in which facets of the human body morph with the landscape into new organic forms. At the core of this exhibition is the hope that we can have a more empathetic approach to the world around us, and consequently a fruitful, reciprocal relationship with the ecosystems in which we exist.
Loren Erdrich is a painter living and working in New York. She has been awarded residencies at the Rental Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, Sculpture Space, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has exhibited internationally at galleries including Shrine, Wasserman Projects (Detroit) and Guts Gallery (London.)
Sonia Jia lives and works between Hangzhou (China) and London (UK). She graduated with an MFA in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2023. Selected exhibitions include: ‘Untouchable’, Cub_ism_Artspace (China, 2022); ‘The Shape of our Time’, Alice Amati (London, 2023); ‘Flower and Thorns’, Eve Leibe Gallery (London, 2023); ‘Floating’, Era Gallery (Milan, 2023)
Noah Schneidermann is a Californian artist who has exhibited both in America and internationally in exhibitions including; Arcadia and Elsewhere, James Cohan (New York, 2024); At the Edge of Everything, Cabin (Berlin, 2023);
Johanna Seidel graduated with an MFA from Huchschule für Bildende Künste Dresden in 2021. She has exhibited internationally in shows including: ‘The Songs of Hecate’, Pictorum Gallery (London, 2023); Azul Celeste, Artistellar Gallery (London, 2022).
Fiona Finnegan graduated with an MFA distinction from Ulster University, Belfast in 2009 and a BA Hons in Music and Visual Practice at the University of Brighton, 2001. Solo exhibitions include The Polar Night at Arusha Gallery, 2022, Midnight Candy at Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2020) and The Frog Devoured The Sun at Domobaal Gallery. Group shows include Portal and Hawthorn and the Feast of Julian at Arusha Gallery, 2023, Generation 2022 at Butler Gallery, Killkenny, Penumbra at F.E Mc William Gallery, Banbridge (2020) and Waking The Witch, a touring exhibition supported by Arts Council England (2018/2019). Her paintings are included in the public collections of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the University of Ulster, Belfast.
Hanne Peeraer is an Italian artist based in London. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2022 and her work has been exhibited around the UK and internationally in Belgium, France and Korea. In 2021 she was selected for New Contemporaries and received a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.
