GIVE ME TWO, curated by Marcus Jahmal and Giorgia Alliata

GIVE ME TWO is a group exhibition organized and curated by Marcus Jahmal and Giorgia Alliata, bringing twelve living artists across generations into deliberate adjacency at Anton Kern Gallery. This show emerged from an ongoing process of assembling that recalls the making of a mixtape, where sequence, pace, and relation produce meaning. The premise of pairing functions as an unfixed structure and a method of discovery, offering a way of noticing the dynamics activated when works are placed in proximity.

Unfolding through napkins, AC units, caricatures, stairs, chandeliers, metal, cybertrucks, jugglers, math, color, and variable heights, the works collectively propose a rhythm that becomes apparent in their joint display: how they hang, lean, echo, interrupt, and negotiate space with one another. Sculptural elements suspend from the ceiling or anchor to the floor, while works on the wall mediate between them and respond to architectural features present in the gallery.

A transparent balcony on the upper level connects the two floors, overlooking the lower level and folding sightlines back onto themselves. The arrangement of pieces mirrors the exhibition’s logic of formation, where one invitation prompts the next and exchanges among peers sustain an open dialogue. The generosity of this proposition lies in its insistence on artist-to-artist conversation as a curatorial ethic that remains in motion.

UMARELL, a methodology that focuses on announcing and programming events within the process of art making and exhibition, will schedule twelve events throughout the run of the show. The program includes artist talks, walkthroughs, installation screenings, and de-installation viewings that attend to the group of artists and their works in real time.

- Marcus Jahmal and Giorgia Alliata di Montereale