Minty is a color and taste and smell and the sickest band in the world. It is the visceral ingredient for this group exhibition. It feels soft and loose around the edges. It isn’t rigid. It escapes its own form, and there’s something alienating about it. At its best, it is a heraldic device for the show.

Working from a disquieted place, Minty is a struggle to connect with people: like Ben Horns’ Thomas paintings, which are devoted to a constant revival of the fantasy of someone and their presence. Minty is a thorny negotiation of what is public and private: like Megan Marrin’s fusing of personal and everyday objects, bound by the fragility of images and materials. It is a lengthy humiliation: as felt in Matt Savitsky’s documentation and ephemera of transforming and performing gender. It is a constant negotiation of limits: like Nicholas Buffon’s continual build up and break down of materials, and his pleasure in testing his audience. And Minty is rid of idols but not completely void of fetishes: Cassie Raihl’s assemblages use latex, rubber, and flesh tones to construct familiar objects with familiar, but sometimes chagrin subject matter.

The artists reflect what’s at stake in both the process of making and the presentation of art. As an avenue for the distribution of ideas, Minty starts with anxiety that conjures forms and transforms performance. From these articulations, it then returns to a sense of anxiety.

Nicholas Buffon (1987, Seattle, WA) lives and works in Seattle and Brooklyn, NY. Selected exhibitions include: Callicoon Fine Arts, New York (solo), Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York (both 2012); and Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC (2010).

Ben Horns (1989, Willow Springs, IL) lives and works in Queens, NY. Selected exhibitions include: Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris (2013); Signal, New York; and 1dM, Chicago (both 2011).

Megan Marrin (1982, St. Louis, MO) lives and works in New York. Selected exhibitions include: Bureau, New York (2013); Bortolami, New York; and Renwick Gallery, New York (two person) (both 2012).

Cassie Raihl (1983, New York) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Selected exhibitions include: Dodge Gallery, New York; Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (both 2012); and Sculpture Center, New York (2010).

Matt Savitsky (1982, Lancaster, PA) lives and works in San Diego, CA. Selected exhibitions include: Bull and Ram, New York; Little Berlin, Philadelphia (both 2012); Good Children Gallery, New Orleans; and Bodega, Philadelphia (both 2011).

CREDITS:
Installation photography: Mark Woods.

• Heinrich, Will. "Minty at Foxy Production." Observer. 23 July. 2013.