Simon Leahy-Clark, Towards Détournement

In Towards Détournement, fifteen artists interrogate the role of power in images; they ask how images can dismantle other images and the values they affirm.

The included artists work across mediums to position familiar forms in new, unexpected contexts, undermine artistic tropes, and create works that resist categorization and reflect the nuances and ambiguity of reality. In several works from the Reduction/Redaction series (2001–), Simon Leahy-Clark cuts text from newspapers, dissecting and revealing their structure. In Josiah Brown’s Judgement (2025), abstracted oil paint marks melt the symbolic compositions of Baroque art. In the video work Country (2024), Tiffany K. Smith layers increasingly pixelated B-roll footage from popular country music videos until it becomes illegible, pointing to how images lose the specificity of their original context over time. Beyond these works, each artist in the exhibition demonstrates ways images can be used to dissect other images. Towards Détournement invites viewers to engage with visual culture as a way of understanding critically and negotiating their positions within a complex society.

Towards Détournement is co-curated by Josiah Brown, Amalya Graham, and Eric Petty.