May 29 – August 9, 2025
Art, given the right circumstances, could get very small, hermetic and quiet—or big and messy. It could look like, to quote the painter and poet Etel Adnan, "the big mess of having a life."
— Arnold J. Kemp
Artists Space is pleased to announce LIFE—a group show, curated by Chicago-based artist and educator Arnold J. Kemp. In the words of its curator, this exhibition “is an armature that supports the continuation of a conversation that I was having with the artist Pope.L (1955 - 2023) for four years before his untimely passing.” Spanning the entire ground floor, LIFE—a group show features a dynamic array of forms—paintings, sculptures, objects, architectural interventions, videos, live performances, and newly commissioned poetry, that express the joyful, mundane, and atrociously unstable textures of sheer existence.
Participating artists include: Lindsay Adams, Zarouhie Abdalian, Israel Aten, Nick Bastis, Nayland Blake, Gregg Bordowitz, Carolyn Castaño, Patty Chang, Mike Cloud, D’Talentz (Nikita Gale, Aryel René Jackson, Tomashi Jackson, Ashley Teamer), Christopher Garrett, Renee Gladman, Robert Glück, Lydia Grey, Léonie Guyer, David Hammons, Geoffrey Hendricks, Xylor Jane, Margaret L. Kemp, Kristan Kennedy, Jinn Bronwen Lee, Eric N. Mack, Devin T. Mays, Malcolm Peacock, Pope.L, Nick Raffel, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Mindy Rose Schwartz, Cauleen Smith, Cameron Spratley, Catherine Sullivan (with George Lewis and Sean Griffin), Collection of Sur Rodney (Sur), Mami Takahashi, Christine Tien Wang, Fred Wilson, and poets David Buuck, Tonya Foster, Erica Hunt, and John Keene.
Gregg Bordowitz will present a performance on Thursday, June 5th at 7pm.

Renowned for work that upended conventions around race, language, masculinity, and citizenship, Pope.L’s practice was both radical and intimate—qualities that resonate throughout this exhibition. While it is not a memorial, the presentation stems from what Kemp describes as “an engagement against the amnesia that surfaces after a loved one passes.” Rather than closing a chapter, the show extends the vitality of an ongoing dialogue, by gathering emerging and established artists, writers, and performers who join Pope.L and Kemp in confronting the complexity, absurdity, and materiality of being alive.
LIFE—a group show is Kemp’s first curatorial project in two decades. Emerging in the early 1990s, his speculative, conceptually rich practice has been matched by astute and visionary curatorial work, a pursuit he began in 1993 when he was Associate Curator at the Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco. Through the intertwined pathways of his career, Kemp has held a sustained interrogation of themes around identity, stereotypes, and notions of “sameness.” A significant figure in conceptual and performance art, his approach to curation mirrors his broader artistic practice: intuitive, interdisciplinary, and deeply rooted in summoning Black experience without solidifying it into a stable identity. Reflecting on his past curatorial work with figures like Mark Dion, Laylah Ali, Tracey Moffatt, Viola Frey, and in the case of musician duo Matmos, Kemp writes: “in that exhibition, life and the real world met art in a way that encapsulated what I wanted to most do as a curator, which was to get out of the way of what art and artists can do and to simply allow art to happen, just like a UFO sighting, a cloud or a sudden rainstorm.”
At its heart, LIFE—a group show offers the exhibition itself as a kind of living structure—a densely networked constellation for holding feeling, contradiction, and dialogue. Kemp’s acute vision brings together a multivocal, intergenerational gathering of artists who, each in their own way, respond to the dissonance and intensity of being here—together, now.
