Elizabeth Insogna & Jesse Bransford

The 'look and feel' of Bransford’s drawings consider several Surrealist strategies, especially concerning ideas of picture and landscape. Less the deserts of Dali, de Chirico, and Tanguy, these works conflict with space in the lines of Zürn, Klee, and Michaux. A space for a longer thought on drawing lurks in the margins. Wash is transfigured in strange ways by the incessant points, dots, and fields of stars that make their way between the color and miasma. The chaos belies an absent body, a body looking and feeling.

Bransford’s floor circle comes together with Insogna’s ceramic sculptures. Based on evidence of the cult of Hekate, the circle is known as a hecterion: triplicity and triads abound in the geometry of the image, and the goddess, spoken to via the energy the circle engenders, is at all times invited into the space. The liminality, the veil, is particularly thin at choice moments.

"Pale Hekate’s Team" will include ritual performances led by Elizabeth Insogna in which her sculptures will move and change, alongside a special performance created by Kay Turner based on Turner’s previous performance for Mary Beth Edelson.

The performance will take place on June 12th, with doors opening at 6 PM and the performance starting at 7 PM.

Elizabeth Insogna is a ceramic based artist focused on the realm of the divine feminine through queer and feminist space as well as occult practices. She has a BFA in sculpture from SUNY New Paltz and an MFA from Brooklyn College. Past solo exhibitions include Tracing the Spirit at RAR gallery in Berlin and Psyche’s Reason in NYC. Two and three person exhibitions include, Doesn’t Hold Water at Underdonk and Hekate’s Grove at FiveMyles Gallery. She has participated in group exhibitions at Bill Arning Exhibitions, Tappeto Volante, The Abrons Art Center, The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, and in multiple curatorial projects by The Sphinx Northeast. Elizabeth Insogna has created and participated in numerous ritual performances with her work which are part of their activation including Scrying Ritual, 2017 (Abrons Art Center), Healing Persephone’s Wounds with Kay Turner (National Arts Club, 2021), The Croning, Invited by Liz Collins with Kay Turner, Stoneleaf Retreat for Upstate Art Weekend, 2022, and most recently The Double Sun with Kay Turner, Bill Arning exhibitions, 2024. Her work has been featured in Artsy, Magic Praxis, Huffington Post, Abraxas Journal, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint and The Brooklyn Rail.

Jesse Bransford is a New York-based artist whose work is exhibited internationally. He holds degrees from the New School for Social Research (BA), Parsons School of Design (BFA) and Columbia University (MFA). A professor of art at New York University, Bransford's work has been involved with belief and the visual systems it creates since the 1990s. Work has been presented in books from Fulgur Press, “A Book of Staves (Galdrastafabók),” and most recently “The Fourth and Fifth Pyramids.” He lectures widely on his work and the topics surrounding his work. He is the co-organizer of the biennial Occult Humanities Conference.