Good Mother Gallery is pleased to present, And After a group show curated by Nathan Bennett and featuring work from Raymond Pettibon, Emma Beatrez, Nate Lowman, Sean Hamilton, Aaron Young, Liza Jo Eilers, Banks Violette, Benjamin Bertocci, Gardar Eide Einarsson, and Brian David Downs. 

Interrogating the function of narrative within an atomized, culturally exhausted society, this exhibition positions the contemporary artist as an anthropological provocateur sifting through the remnants of history and capital. Drawing conceptual architecture from Isidore Ducasse’s radical 1869 novel Les Chants de Maldoror, the selected works reject conciliatory or restorative gestures in favor of honest criticality, creating space where traditional categorization fails. In an era of infinite digital saturation and simulated realities, And After revisits the relational aesthetics framework anew, pausing on the function and disfunction as it relates to the artist’s voice and their reverberation into and against society. By confronting the hyper-industrialized present through individualized disruption, these artists express collective, vital protest, shattering the containers of normative tradition to map out an unestablished future.

“An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest. Just to open his mouth is to protest: against conformism, against what is official, public, or national, what everyone else feels comfortable with, so the moment he opens his mouth, an artist is engaged, because opening his mouth is always scandalous.”

-Pier Paolo Pasolini