Tinney Contemporary is proud to present Let’s Go Swimming, a summertime group exhibition, blending the extraordinary talents of Sophia Belkin, Megan Greene, Esther Ruiz, Elise Thompson, and Yanira Vissepó. The show runs from Saturday, July 5 through August 16, 2025. The opening reception will be on Saturday, July 12, 2025 from 2 to 9 p.

It’s as if the long, hot summer of the southern gothics somehow manifests its own antidote, an oasis as reprieve from the heat. Picture the swimming hole of your youth. Barefoot, clambering up worn roots of the bur oaks on the banks, carefully avoiding shattered Miller bottles and cigarette butts, up to the highest ledge. A place of inversion: the surface mirrors the sky, the branches overhead—suddenly, the illusion is shattered by the front-flip bravado of high divers, the occasional riotous bellyflop. Weightless in free-fall, violently breaking the surface, weightless again in the brisk water. Breathless, nose plugged, cheeks puffed, peering up at the surface from among the reeds. Nowhere else can hold this commingling of sanctuary and transgression—bildungsroman baptismal, the smell of dark and damp earth, dirt-weed psychedelia. Hallucinatory sun-poisoning, cool mud and water remedy—everything shimmering in heat waves, ultraviolet and super-saturated.

The works in the exhibition investigate organic forms and imagined environments through various modes of abstraction. Pools and plants, waves and wells, stones and splashes are revealed through each artists’ expressive mark-making, acute attention to detail, and innovative use of materials. Collectively, the works accomplish a sort of thaumaturgy, evoking an impossible landscape, a mirage that doesn’t dissipate as you draw closer.


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Tinney Contemporary is proud to present DARK BIG BANG, a solo exhibition by Benjy Russell. The exhibition will be on display from May 17, 2025 through June 28, 2025. The opening reception will be held on May 17 from 5 to 9 PM. A second reception will be held on June 14  in conjunction with the DADA (Downtown Arts District Alliance)  Second Saturday Art Crawl.





DARK BIG BANG draws its title from the leading quantum theory on the origin of dark matter in the universe: a separate, second big bang that unleashed all the unseen and immeasurable dark energy comprising the majority of the known universe. Russell draws a parallel between this cosmological phenomenon and the root traumas experienced along our own human timelines—events that affect our everyday existence, yet are often difficult to pinpoint. These moments can stem from ancestral trauma passed down generationally, childhood trauma, past experiences of death and illness, as well as moments of "root joy," which shape how we move through life.

Mapping his own intergenerational history led Russell to uncover his Choctaw family’s involvement in the devastating and genocidal Trail of Tears, ending in the artist’s home state of Oklahoma; his family’s land allotment under the liquidation of communally-held tribal lands into privately owned properties; and his grandmother and great-grandmother’s forced attendance at a Catholic Indian Boarding School near his hometown. The latter was an instrumental tool in the erasure of Indigenous culture and the loss of generational knowledge in his family—and Indigenous families across Turtle Island (a term for North and Central America used by many Indigenous peoples).

The work in DARK BIG BANG finds Russell re-contextualizing traditional Choctaw crafts such as basket weaving, pottery, beadwork, and embroidery—crafts that use natural elements to create art through pattern and repetition. Embracing these diverse materials and practices, the artist constructs three-dimensional sculptural objects and environments, which he photographs to create lens-based "drawings." Russell utilizes  in-camera effects to create lens-based works rooted in sculpture, performance, and process. His multidisciplinary practice defies neat categorization within the traditional boundaries of photography.

Russell’s varied approach and materials speak to his own complex history as a queer rural artist raised on the Chickasaw reservation, now a widower and AIDS survivor. This Venn diagram of identities and histories is mirrored in geometric goddess figures constructed from lighting gels commonly used in gay bars and nightlife culture; multi-panel pieces featuring his HIV medication photographed on velvet, reading more like embroidery than photography; kaleidoscopic sets made of mirrors and roses whose logistics are impossible to discern; and blocks of bulletproof acrylic floating in space.

DARK BIG BANG is both a meditation on trauma and a celebration of the joy that can arise from our shared human experience. Through this innovative body of work, Benjy Russell invites viewers to embark on a journey of reflection, healing, and hope—a journey from darkness into a reimagined future.


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Tinney Contemporary is proud to present Serious Fun, a solo exhibition by Martica Griffin. The show runs from Saturday, July 12 through August 16, 2025. The opening reception will be on Saturday, July 12, 2025 from 2 to 9 pm. The exhibition will take place as a part of the second annual Art Between the Avenues event, in space 61 on the second floor of the Arcade.

Martica Griffin’s latest exhibition features mixed media collage works that mark a departure from her usual painting practice. This body of work emerged from a Shakerag workshop, led by local artist Jodi Hays, which reinvigorated Griffin’s long term love-affair with collage. Bringing in found materials, these dimensional assemblages build upon her patchwork style. The commonplace objects employed in their making provide artistic constraints as well as imbuing the work with a sense of immediacy. Dyed and folded paper, corrugated cardboard, and faded printed material create vibrant, textured geometric compositions that convey the playful process of their making.

Nashville, Tennessee-based artist Martica Griffin uses energetic lines, organic structures, geometric forms and sensual colors to create her works. She primarily works in abstraction on canvas and paper using a wide variety of mediums including acrylic, oil, collage, plaster and crayon. Her work is characterized by layers of color, lines of gesture and a combination of natural and architectural shapes. Her visual language reflects landscape, popular culture, and history.

A native of Valdosta, Georgia, Griffin graduated from East Carolina University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. She has done post-graduate work at the School for Visual Arts in New York and studied with internationally acclaimed painters. Her work resides in various public and private collections.

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Tinney Contemporary is proud to present Cosmic Downloads, a solo exhibition by Sky Kim. The exhibition will be on display from April 5, 2025 through May 10, 2025. The opening reception will be held on April 12 from 2-9 PM in conjunction with the DADA (Downtown Arts District Alliance) Second Saturday

Sky Kim examines the relation between the cosmic and microscopic using water-based paint and crystals. Her work is central to a larger practice of meditation, informed by sacred geometry, astronomy, and quantum physics. Anemones and coral flowers, molecular and interstellar forms all bloom in transfixing mandalas of vibrant watercolor and Swarovski crystals.

Cosmic Downloads speaks to an attunement with the universe and an awareness of our place within it. The imperceptibly small is mirrored in the unimaginably large. Cosmic Downloads revels in this symmetry and locates the observer at the center.

Born in Seoul, Korea and she received a M.F.A in Painting from Pratt Institute. She is a recipient of the National Korean Art Competition Awards, a Pratt Institute Art Grant and Jersey City Art Council Fellowship. She has exhibited and participated in art fairs in major venues around the world, including the US, Denmark, UK, Mexico, Germany, Canada, and Australia and has been lecturing as a guest artist, panel and keynote speaker at universities and art conferences. Her work has received international critical acclaim in Forbes Magazine, The Wall Street International, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Juxtapoz Magazine, The Korea Herald, Artlog and The Korea Daily, Artefuse and Arts Observer, and on WMBC-TV.  

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