A handful of small isopods and springtails dwell in Kay Kasparhauser’s gritty Entrance gallery exhibition, New Decay, however, unusually for bio artwork, these creatures aren’t the celebrities of the present. What stands out as an alternative are the makeshift habitats the artist has fabricated for them. One terrarium is embedded in a precarious foam tower (“Bonkio,” all works 2025). One other is wedged inside an orange visitors barrier, whose different openings include trash and stagnant water (“Every time i think I’m absolutely going to die I love you so much I love you so much”). Numerous foam assemblages, pocked with odd apertures, dangle from the basement gallery’s ceiling and partitions. These dilapidated sculptures evoke a subterranean metropolis constructed for critters.
From a small animal’s standpoint, that’s most likely how most human basements seem anyway. However from Kasparhauser’s perspective, the set up constitutes a fabric exploration of what she calls, in an artist’s assertion revealed late final yr on Substack, “the anxiety of inadequate containers.” The stakes are existential for all beings, however keenly felt by Kasparhauser, whose unspecified persistent sickness “affords [her] an intimate understanding of decay, rupture, and repair.” On her social media accounts, she unflinchingly paperwork features of her therapies, posting photos of her scarred abdomen and joking that her long run hospital stays are artist residencies. However you don’t even want that context to know New Decay’s argument that every one containers are not directly insufficient to the duty of preserving their contents from hurt.
Kay Kasparhauser, “Bonkio” (2025), foam, latex, plaster, burlap, increasing foam, silicone, plexiglass, bioactive substrate, leaf litter, cork wooden, zebra isopods, springtails, tradescantia, lighting system (picture courtesy the artist and Entrance gallery)
Small particulars all through the present trace on the necessity and limitations of care. A vinyl strip door has been put in behind the picket entryway door, as if the gallery itself have been a container requiring an additional protecting layer from the surface world. The bricolage sculptures, riddled with nooks and crannies, and bearing the imprints of their fabrication, double as human decor and animal shelter. The isopods Kasparhauser cultivates inside these constructions may very well be mistaken for bugs however are literally crustaceans, whose exoskeletons protect their weak our bodies. The artist depicts these literal and metaphorical containers with coarse realism; they might not at all times present the consolation our species or others need, however they’re what’s accessible, which is healthier than nothing.
Kasparhauser’s willingness to reckon with the world as it’s, quite than pine for a way we’d want it to be, takes on extra, allegorical which means given Entrance’s location and historical past. Gallerist Louis Shannon grew up close to the Decrease East Facet and has operated Entrance’s basement area since he was a youngster, initially internet hosting underground music reveals there earlier than ultimately changing it right into a gallery. Just like the artist and her isopods, creatives discover methods to persist regardless of antagonistic circumstances, typically by occupying interstitial city areas that no person else desires or is aware of about. New Decay accommodates, however doesn’t fake to safe, that type of life for individuals who perceive its necessity.
Set up view of Kay Kasparhauser, “Every time i think I’m absolutely going to die I love you so much I love you so much” (2025), visitors barrier, plexiglass, bioactive substrate, cork bark, sphagnum moss, pothos, milkback isopods, spring-tails, lighting system, assorted trash (picture Louis Bury/Hyperallergic)
Drawings by Kay Kasparhauser (picture courtesy the artist and Entrance gallery)
Kay Kasparhauser, “Untitled (Container)” (2024), foam, latex, metal plaster, picture switch, increasing foam, cotton thread, orange powder isopod, plexiglass
Kay Kasparhauser, “Je suis belle” (2024), foam, latex, metal plaster, picture switch, increasing foam, cotton thread, orange powder isopod, plexiglass
Kay Kasparhauser: New Decay continues at Entrance Gallery (Storefront R, 48 Ludlow Avenue, Decrease East Facet) via March 15. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
