Matty Davis + Ben Gould: Carriage Bearance Severance

Friday, 20 October 2023

Davis and Gould’s collaboration began as an exploration of reliance, control, and care. Matty Davis is an artist and choreographer engaged in collaborative, embodied explorations of the tension between our fragility and fortitude. His work frequently uses choreography as a tool to cultivate high-stakes relationships—ranging from the interpersonal to the cosmic—that push himself and others to creatively face and negotiate forces that drive some of the most important parts of our lives: trust, risk, love, empathy, commitment, and responsibility. After the sudden and late onset of Tourette syndrome, Ben Gould’s practice adapted to focus on the body, exploring loss of control, resistance, and energy systems within and outside our physiology. Through a growing mythos shaped by personal medical procedures, the history of disability treatment, and the embodiment of new narratives through art-making, Gould creates a space for fantasy and freedom—opposing the rigidity of physical limitation and societal norms. With the body as a source, Gould’s multidisciplinary practice is driven by his neurological condition, which provides both a choreographic motor and ideological framework for projects ranging from site-specific performances to sculpture and film.

This will be the U.S. museum premiere of Carriage Bearance Severance. The work has previously been performed at Palais de Tokyo, Bozar, Carnegie Mellon’s Miller ICA, Human Resources, the Chicago Cultural Center, Open Spaces, Creative Growth, Queenslab, as well as in a former military battery, a limestone cave network, and aboard a moving vessel on the Chicago River.

About Matty Davis | Over the last decade, Matty’s work has been presented by various institutions in the U.S. and abroad, as well as in many intentional site-specific locations integral to the meaning of a given work—from mountains to hurricane-churned shorelines, living rooms to the gritty concrete of New York City. Institutionally, his work has been presented by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Momentary (Bentonville, AR), the ICA Miller at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), the Fine Arts Center at the University of Arkansas, The Anderson at Virginia Commonwealth University, Kanal Centre Pompidou (Brussels), Bozar (Brussels), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Arts Arena (Paris), the Max Ernst Museum (Brühl), Pioneer Works (NYC), Steppenwolf Theater (Chicago), among others. He is the author of six books and, since 2021, has been trailblazing a new form, “performance arranged for print,” with long-standing publishing collaborator Matt Wolff. As part of his collaborative practice, he has worked with artists including Hito Steyerl, writers Will Arbery and Chloé Cooper Jones, and many others across various fields: surgeons, carpenters, aviators, athletes, and environmentalists. He loves to teach and work with people of all ages and abilities and has done so at many colleges, universities, schools, and organizations. For more information: www.mattydavis.net.

About Ben Gould | Gould has exhibited work and performed site-specific projects throughout the country, from varied landscapes to institutional spaces—such as a hydroelectric power plant in New York, a quarry in Illinois, a limestone mine in Kansas City, a bunker in the Marin Headlands, and a moving vessel on the Chicago River. Gould received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2015, apprenticed with master craftsmen in California, and was a 2015 Ox-Bow Fellow. He was an artist-in-residence at Queenslab in New York City in 2018, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant recipient, a 2019 Haystack Open Studio resident, a 2020 Lighton International Artists Exchange Program Grant recipient, and a 2021 NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Work. Most recently, Gould has presented and shown new works and performances at Kanal Centre Pompidou (Brussels, Belgium), Liberal Arts Roxbury (NY), Bozar (Brussels, Belgium), the Center for Craft (Asheville, NC), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), the Tarble Arts Center (Charleston, IL), and Lyles & King (NYC).

Image: Ben Gould and Matty Davis performing Carriage Bearance Severance. Photo by Steven Visneau for Dallas Contemporary.