Jennifer Carvalho, Patrick Bayly, Thomas Blair, Eloise Hess, Tony Hope, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Hoda Kashiha, Pere Llobera, Thebe Phetogo, and Elif Saydam

Helena Anrather is pleased to present Dogtooth, an exhibition organized by Megan Yuan featuring ten artists whose work flirts with apocalypse. How do we handle the unnerving potential of collapse, or the worldbuilding that might precede or follow such destruction? The exhibition features artwork by Patrick Bayly, Thomas Blair, Jennifer Carvalho, Eloise Hess, Tony Hope, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Hoda Kashiha, Pere Llobera, Thebe Phetogo, and Elif Saydam.

In Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2009 film Dogtooth,  the father of a Greek family maintains a web of lies in order to seal his family away from society, preventing his children from interacting with the outside world: they are shut out from language, from the normal operations of power, from conventions of cause and effect. The oldest daughter eventually escapes the compound, but remains entangled in the trappings of her father’s deception, which proves to be a lingering psychic as well as material force– underscoring that, of course, we all live in a reality filtered and constructed by myths for propping up the world.

Painting has always been dogged by accusations of falseness. Its complicated relationship with the truth makes it a natural way to tango with questions of doxa, escapism and lies. The works in this show don’t offer any answers, but deliver a heavy dose of anxiety, through green screens, bible stories, national geographic imagery, inscrutable narratives, time capsules, and an ouroboros of collapse.