Alexa Horochowski — Nomeacuerdo (I-don’t-remember-land), a solo art exhibition of new sculpture and video by the Minneapolis artist opening February 27, 2021-March 27, 2021 at HAIR+NAILS.

Nomeacuerdo (I-don’t-remember-land) — an exhibion of new objects, digital prints, and video — is Horochowski’s first exhibition with HAIR+NAILS; a total take-over of the gallery’s storefront in South Minneapolis, not far from the artist’s home studio. H+N has long admired Horochowski’s virtuosic wrestling with diverse materials, object-making both absurd and practical, ideas both poetic and urgently political. The exhibition’s title is drawn from a children’s song by a well-known poet from the artist’s childhood home, Argentina. Informed by a life immersed in radically different landscapes — the desolate Argentine fringes of Patagonia’s Atlantic coast and the fertile Midwest woodlands hugging the great lakes — chance encounters with various materials, natural or man-made, often provide a starting point for the artist’s works in sculpture and video. Working at the intersection of what is human and what is not, Horochowski’s work bridges national borders by considering the landscape and human condition from a global perspective. In the artist’s words: “Warning of the ramifications of climate change, I aspire to question the sustainability of a consumer society that exacerbates inequality and degrades the environment. Through this lens, human-kind and its impact on the earth can be viewed as yet another natural force, creating and unleashing materials and substances that are moved around the globe by the jet stream, ocean currents or even industrial systems heedless of how we might define a landscape as urban or rural, developed or undeveloped.“​​​​​​​​  Expect: an ashtray collaboration with a bird, obsidian sunglasses, a video installation with a keen eye for dog-human bonding.

More in the artist’s words:

In the Permian-Triassic extinction event, known as the Great Dying, roughly 251 million years ago, an estimated 70 percent of land plants and animals died. Memory of life is written in the fossil record by the victims of extinction. Within geologic time, the lifespans of the living are fleeting. One of the oldest beings, found in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of eastern California, is Methuselah, a bristlecone pine, that is near 5,000 years old.

My Ukrainian-Argentinian father is 85 years old, born on the same day that Minneapolitan, George Floyd, at 46 years of age, was killed, May 25, 1935/2020.

The pandemic has accentuated human vulnerabilities to climate change. Urbanization and habitat encroachment result in interspecies co-mingling that gives rise to novel coronaviruses. Scientists speak regularly of ecosystem collapse brought on by human reliance on fossil fuels. We are living a time of convergence where climate change is no longer abstract but of consequence in our daily lives.

This exhibition offers a reverie about human and non-human relationships and encounters with deep and near time. Time etches the thoughts and memories of ancestors, living and dead, into the strata of the human brain. From 5,500 miles away, my father accompanies me in my travels and craft. Objects, digital prints, and video embody sensory experiences such as: hiking the lava fields of Kilauea Volcano, Volcanoes National Park, Big Island, Hawaii; co-habiting with a Northern flicker at an A-frame, Forest Island Project, Mammoth Lakes, California; following stray dogs performing non-human allyship with human protesters, Concepción, Chile; welding and weaving an Acapulco chair, the outcome of a YouTube, how-to-video uploaded by Mexican fabricator, José Ríos.                -Alexa Horochowski
Artist bio:

Alexa Horochowski is a dual citizen of Argentina and the United States. Her art practice includes sculpture, photography and video. Artist residencies at Forest Island Project, Mammoth Lakes, CA (2018), MAM, Chiloé(2017), CASAPOLI, Coliúmo (2013) significantly impacted her material and geopolitical research into the interrelationship between the environment and humankind. Horochowski holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Art and Journalism from the University of Missouri. She has produced installations at, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN; The Rochester Art Center, Rochester MN; The Nemeth Art Center, Park Rapids, MN; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN; The Drawing Center, NYC; Braga Menéndez Gallery, Buenos Aires; Diverseworks, Houston. Selected fellowships include an Efroymson Artist Fellowship (2018), three McKnight Visual Artist Fellowships (2019/2014/2003), Artist Initiative Grants (2014/2012), and a Bush Artist Fellowship (2004). Horochowski teaches studio arts at St. Cloud State University.