January 2024: Meet the Artists
Merik Goma, Pacifico Silano and Samuel Levi Jones
Merik Goma
Merik Goma is a Michigan-born, New Haven-based photographer. Goma constructs intricate sets within his studio, which he utilizes as both the subjects of tableaux and the backdrops for narrative portrait photography. His technique exhibits a painterly execution, showcasing meticulous attention to color and lighting. An alumnus of the NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program, his work has been showcased by Tilton Gallery and is part of the collections of 21C Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, and the Detroit Institute of Art. Goma represented Connecticut in the New England Triennial at the DeCordova Museum, received the FY21 Connecticut Artistic Excellence award, and was chosen as the Joyce C. Willis Artist in Residence by the Amistad Center for Arts & Culture at the Wadsworth.
Pacifico Silano
Pacifico Silano is a lens-based appropriation artist based in New York City, where he graduated with an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012. Exploring print culture, image circulation and questions of LGBT+ identity, his work is entirely composed of repurposed fragments from gay pornographic magazines of the 1970s and 80s – an era connecting the progressive legacies of sexual revolution with the advent of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis. Rephotographing sections of the magazines, Silano assembles his new images into a range of seductive installations, which often reference the materiality of the publications themselves – honing in on stapled centerfolds, torn sheets or the faded color palette of printed pages weathered through time.
Silano’s works have been exhibited in both group and solo shows at the likes of the Bronx Museum; Tacoma Art Museum; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Museum of Sex; The International Center for Photography, Houston Center for Photography; Baxter ST@CCNY; Rubber-Factory; Stellar Projects; Light Work; Melanie Flood Projects; Fragment Gallery & Luis De Jesus Gallery. His work is also found in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Silano is a past recipient of the Aaron Siskin Foundation Fellowship, the NYFA Fellowship in Photography, and a finalist of the 2013 Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize.
Samuel Levi Jones
For over a decade, Samuel Levi Jones has pulled apart and utilized the bindings, covers, and pages of books that represent dominant US narratives of history and intellect. By obfuscating these texts, and transforming their materials into fields of color, he provides an emphasis on peripheral voices. His paintings and sculptural works ask- what hasn’t been shared, and whose story has been omitted? Jones’ pursuit of truth inherently rejects authority, but his ability to do so from a position of beauty, tests the limits of social practice in white-wall spaces.
Jones’ work is part of the permanent collections of the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently represented by Galerie Lelong and has exhibited work with PATRON and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
