Nowhere Fast

Cassidy Early | Jessi Li | Matt Jones

January 7 - February 17, 2023

Nowhere Fast brings together new works by Cassidy Early, Jessi L, and Matt Jones. All exhibiting for the first time at Olympia, each artist separately toys with the idea and space of voids, finding supposed absence a fruitful place for imagination. The present voids point to other fields of existence, personal loss, and material erasure, but are grounded in the world that shapes our vision. 

Jessi Li’s sculptures reference the bizarre wonder of NYC’s local beaches, where manufactured and nature-made objects are transformed by the indiscriminate forces of the environment. Li prioritizes chance and risk in their warped linear ceramic structures and cast glass in the form of sea shells. The empty interiors suggest a mysterious, portal-like space offering the possibility for connection with the unknown. Cassidy Early’s paintings depict loss and the desire to reconnect with former selves and departed loved ones. Their multifarious imagery—including notebook paper, dandelions, and the human figure—are tributes to the talismanic power of memory. In his colored pencil drawings, Matt Jones creates palimpsests by building up and then erasing layers of signs, symbols, and images in brilliant saturated color, creating spectral environments populated with creatures that peer out as if from an ordinarily concealed dimension. 

Through their highly visible marks, all three artists imbue negative spaces with a material quality, causing a feeling of presence to warmly manifest. The drawings, paintings, and sculptures on view are physical reminders that nothing, or nowhere, can be a site of movement, innovation, and mystery. 

- Lee Maxey

Cassidy Early (b. 1994, Worcester, MA) is a nonbinary Scottish American artist living and working in Chicago, IL. They graduated from SAIC with a MFA in Painting in 2020 and received their BFA from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts in 2016. Early’s first solo show was with Lauren Powell Projects, (Los Angeles,CA) in the fall of 2022. Early’s work has been featured in exhibitions with La Loma Projects (Pasadena, CA), Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI), The Salon at The Wing Chicago (Chicago, IL), and in “I Like Your Work,” Podcast. They have forthcoming group exhibitions with the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago, IL) and Art+Lit Lab (Madison, WI). Their work has been published alongside a Garth Greenwell essay in Harper's Magazine (Nov. 2020), and as the LVL3 Artist of the Week.

Jessi Li  (b.1987) grew up in Jersey City, NJ. They hold a MFA from Hunter College (2019) and a BA from Bard College at Simon’s Rock (2009). Li Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and has exhibited at the Agnes Varis Art Center (UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, NY), Anonymous Gallery (New York, NY), Cape Cod Museum of Art, is a frequent participant of Project Art Distribution (P.A.D.), Li was an artist in residence at Chautauqua School of Art, Pottery Northwest, a fellowship recipient at Pratt Fine Art Center, and a post-baccalaureate student in glass at VCU School of Art. Li Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and teaches sculpture at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Greenwich House Pottery. They have shown their work nationally in group and solo exhibitions in New York, NY; Jersey City, NJ; Seattle, WA; Milwaukee, WI; Cape Cod, MA; and Toledo, OH. 

Matt Jones has had one or two person shows at Galerie Jerome Pauchant (Paris), Freight + Volume Gallery (New York), and Horton Gallery (Berlin). He has participated in NADA Miami (The Hole, New York), Spring Break Art Fair (New York), and a solo presentation at Art Brussels (Bodson Gallery, Brussels). His work has been displayed in group shows at Robert Miller (New York), Soy Capitán (Berlin), Anonymous (Mexico City), ADA Gallery (Richmond, VA), Galleri Geo (Bergan, Norway), The Artbridge Drawing Room (New York), Gildar Gallery (Beverly Hills, CA), Fiebach Minninger (Cologne), and The Hole (New York). Jones attended the Yale University School of Art—Norfolk on the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Grant (2001), received a BFA from Cooper Union (2002), and completed an MFA at Hunter College (2021). In 2007 Jones founded Puppy American, a small independent press which publishes artist books, zines, poetry, and organizes exhibitions, focusing on collaboration. He lives and works in New York City.

Installation Views: