In Medias Res

Allen-Golder Carpenter, Whitney Claflin, Elise Corpataux, Kai Jenrette, Orion Martin, Andy Meerow, Jay Payton, Machteld Rullens, Naoki Sutter-Shudo

June 27–August 1, 2025

Derosia is pleased to present In Medias Res, a group exhibition featuring the work of Allen-Golder Carpenter, Whitney Claflin, Elise Corpataux, Kai Jenrette, Orion Martin, Naoki Sutter-Shudo, Andy Meerow, Jay Payton, and Machteld Rullens. The exhibition takes its title from the literary technique in which a narrative work opens in the chronological middle of its plot, rather than its beginning. 

In Andy Meerow’s untitled work on canvas, painted and drawn marks combine with offset paint transfers and pages of the news layered into the surface. Meerow’s work is concerned as much with the accumulation of information as with its dissolution and obstruction. The aggregation of mark making and visual noise combine to create an image both harmonious and dissonant. 

The accretion and transformation of ordinary material also appears in the work of Machteld Rullens, whose wall-bound works fluidly navigate the space between image and object. Constructed from painted and bolted refuse cardboard, Rullens finishes each work in high gloss, polishing and crystalizing her muscular forms. 
 

Such tactile engagements appear in the work of Whitney Claflin as well, whose painted and collaged works incorporate found metal, earrings, iron-on patches, buttons, and excerpted text from an interview with the musician Grimes. Claflin’s expanded field of production permits a diverse range of motifs: door knobs dot exhibition spaces throughout the gallery, a textile work recalls the compositions of modernism, and a lyrical abstraction blooms with color and light. 
 

Non-representational in nature, Jay Payton’s paintings are heavily layered with oil and wax to create intricately textured surfaces. Payton’s large abstraction oscillates between appearing as an infinitely expansive night sky, and a microscopic ecosystem. The painting is alchemical and alive, mapping the immaterial onto a physical plane.

In two paintings by Orion Martin, shaped panels bookend a painting on canvas. Martin’s characteristic fetish for detail and surface create a startling interplay between object and illusion. These compositions are tributes to the stained glass works of Martin’s close friend and here too, evoke the structural order of a Mondrian painting, albeit layered, fractured, and utterly fantastical.
 

Fragmented layers of photographic, graphic, and painterly imagery coalesce in the works of Elise Corpataux. Intricately painted, yet imbued with the romantic lightness of a sketch, the three works evince her preoccupation with the passage of time, projection, and memory.  

Allen-Golder Carpenter’s Sipper’s Price is a collage of styrofoam cups and ashes that form a distorted cloud through which we see a portrait of the rapper Young Thug. In late 2024, Thug narrowly beat a life sentence after fighting a lengthy RICO trial in Georgia. He was given 15 years probation upon his release along with extensive limits on his speech and behavior, including many things that are a core part of his identity as an artist. But after a series of reckless public statements that jeopardized his freedom, he has been widely criticized for not being able to let go of his previous life. The styrofoam cups in this work reference the popular drug “lean,” a cocktail of promethazine, codeine cough syrup, and soda often consumed in styrofoam cups and heavily associated with Southern rap. Addiction, lifestyle, growth, and progress are recurring tropes in Carpenter's work.
 

Kai Jenrette’s graphite on waxed newsprint works are built up slowly as forms emerge to develop unique identities from accumulated mark making. Controlled linework evokes the precision of graphic design as non-representational subjects refuse categorical description. Jenrette’s elegant contours are disrupted at times by the character of the paper surface which ripples and bends, breaking their otherwise flat geometries. 
 

An untitled wall work by Naoki Sutter-Shudo presents four successive iterations of a blue geometric shape atop an enameled support. The form, initially taken from a flattened carton of Gauloises Blondes Bleues cigarettes, is here imagined as a design for a public square and transformed into an architectural model in the style of Le Corbusier, exploring cultural attitudes towards behavior in the public sphere. A second Sutter-Shudo inclusion in the exhibition, titled Work, is a single iteration of an ongoing work comprising 106 stacked cigarette boxes, each individually wrapped in flame retardant foil tape. A cigarette decreases a life on average by 11 minutes and as its consumption is the necessary prerequisite for this work, the fee for the work is based on the minimum wage of the artist’s state of residence: California at $16.50/hr. Each pack of cigarettes is compensated at a rate of $60.50 and hence the presentation of this group of 106 amounts to $6413. 
 

Allen-Golder Carpenter (b. 1999) lives and works in Washington DC. Their work has been exhibited at Förderverein Aktuelle Kunst, Münster (2025); 032c, Berlin (2025); Harlesden High Street, London (2025, with Emmanuel Massillon); Dropcity Center For Architecture and Design, Milan (2025); 032c Gallery, Berlin (2025); Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2024); Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2024); No Gallery, New York (2024, solo); HOUSE, Berlin (2023); Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna (2023, solo); Housing Gallery, New York (2023); von ammon, Washington D.C. (2022, solo) amongst others.
 

Whitney Claflin (b. 1983) lives and works in New York. Select solo and two-person exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York (2025); Derosia, New York (2024, 2020); Drei, Cologne (2024, 2020); Haus Erholung, Mönchengladbach, Germany (2024); Drei (with Rochelle Feinstein, curated by Fabrice Stroun, 2022); and Real Fine Arts, New York (2017, 2014, 2010). Select recent group exhibitions include Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai (2024); G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig (2023); Layr, Vienna (2023); Office Baroque, Antwerp (2023); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2022); Sandy Brown, Berlin (2021); Shoot the Lobster, New York (2020); Galerie Buchholz, New York (2019); Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2018); and Greene Naftali, New York (2018).
 

Elise Corpataux (b. 1994) lives and works in Fribourg, Switzerland. She completed a Master's degree at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW in 2020 and received the scholarship from the Leenaards Foundation in 2021. Recent presentations of her work include: Braunsfelder, Cologne, DE (2024); Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels, BE (2023–24, duo); Kunsthalle Friart, Fribourg (2023, solo); Liste Art Fair, Basel, with suns.works (2022, solo); Hotel des Tourelles, Geneva (2022, duo); Plymouth Rock, Zurich (2021, solo); galerie lange+pult, Auvernier (2021, duo); Kiefer Hablitzel Prize, Halle 3, Basel (2021); Platform19, CACY, Yverdon-les-Bains (2019).
 

Kai Jenrette (b. 2001) lives and works in New York, NY. He received his BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art. He has exhibited at Silke Linder, New York; LVL3, Chicago; April April, Pittsburg; White Columns, New York; Cooper Union, New York; and My Perfect Environment, Chicago. He recently completed a residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and published I’M PERFECT LIFE’S PERFECT I LOVE BEING ME with Du-Good Press, Brooklyn. Other past publications include KENNY + PENNY, recently acquired by the National Gallery of Art Library.

Orion Martin (b. 1988) lives and works in Los Angeles. Select solo exhibitions include Derosia, New York (2023, 2021, 2018, 2016); High Art, Arles (2021); High Art, Paris (2018) and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (2017). Select group exhibitions include American Art Projects, Berlin, Germany (2025); Chez Max et Dorothe, Seillans, France (2024); Hudson House, Hudson (2022); W Space, Qingdao (2021); Mao Space, Shanghai (2020); Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2018); Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2018); and Whitney Museum of American Art (2015). Martin’s work is in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. 

Andy Meerow (b. 1980) lives and works in New York. Select exhibitions include No Gallery, New York (2024); Derosia, New York (2024, 2021, 2016, 2014); Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2023); As It Stands, Los Angeles (2023); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri (2022); KAJE, Brooklyn (2019); Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn (2017); Ramiken, New York (2017); Eva Meyer, Paris (2017); and And Now, Dallas (2016).
 

Jay Payton (b. 1992) is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BA from Georgia State University. Recent solo exhibitions include Sea View, Los Angeles (2025); Gern en Regalia, New York (2024, 2021); Delaplane Gallery, San Francisco (2021); Rørvig Contemporary, Denmark (2020); Et. Al, San Francisco (2019); and Mammal Gallery, Atlanta (2018). Group exhibitions include Reena Spaulings, New York (2025); Silke Linder, New York (2024); Clima, Milan (2024); Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2020); Art in General, Brooklyn (2019); Leo Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Syndkt, Mexico City (2019); Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta (2018); and Camayuhs, Atlanta (2018).

Machteld Rullens (b.1988) lives and works in The Hague, The Netherlands. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Galeria Mascota, Mexico City, MX; Kunsthal Rotterdam, NL; Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels, BE; PAGE (NYC), New York, NY; Overduin & Co., Los Angeles, CA; Vincent van Gogh Huis, Zundert, NL; Dover Street Market, Tokyo, JPN; Galerie Martin van Zomeren, Amsterdam, NL.

Naoki Sutter-Shudo (b. 1990) lives and works in Los Angeles. Select solo exhibitions include Crèvecoeur, Paris (2025, 2021, 2018); Derosia, New York (2024, 2021, 2017); Gaga & Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles (2024); Keijiban, Kanazawa, Japan (2024); XYZ Collective, Tokyo (2022); Alienze, Vienna (2022); Crèvecoeur at Contemporary Fine Arts, Milan (2022); The Vanity, Los Angeles (2022); and Crèvecoeur, Marseille, France (2019). Select group exhibitions include Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Grasse, France (2025); Institut Français de Tokyo, Tokyo (2024); Reena Spaulings at Galerie Hussenot, Paris (2024); Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles (2023); Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2022); Derosia, New York (2022); Les Urbaines, Lausanne, Switzerland (2021); Nordenhake, Stockholm (2021); Crèvecoeur, Paris (2020, 2019); Commercial Street, Los Angeles (2020); Le Plateau, FRAC Ile-de-France, Paris (2019); and Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles (2018). His work is in the permanent collection of Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France and MAMCO Genève, Switzerland.