After 2.5 years on pause, American Institute of Thoughts and Feelings is pleased to present The Hole in the Fence, a group exhibition hosted by Everybody in Tucson, Arizona. The show features five artists based in Arizona, California, and New Mexico.

A miniature metal carousel horse is mounted on a small wooden box. After releasing a couple of windups to the gearbox below, the horse starts to turn slowly to the thin metal tune of “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)”. The horse is bound by not just the box but its carousel pole. The thin tune, still playing, holds the clicking rhythm of the horses turn, the horse in effect unable to trot, to graze, to stampede.

A chain-link fence on the edge of town partitions residents from personnel. Bolt cutters create the portal from one side to the other. For every outpouring an implied potential of containment, for every boundary an implied potential of boundlessness.

The works on display in The Hole in the Fence span across media: drawings, paintings, assemblage, ceramics, text, found object. Scrawled on the wall in their handwriting, the lyrics to Kid Violet’s deathwife set the tone for the exhibition: i am ridden with her ivy / she makes rubble of me / she says / get to know thyself / by wishing. In Gwen Hollingsworth’s intimate paintings, the metaphysical and omen-like images emerge out of the shadow void. Similarly mystical but visually teetering between light and darkness, Chauncey Penney’s colorful varied forms point to remnants of gestures from which the internal flows. Meanwhile, Drew Miller’s strategic renderings provide a paper trail for his visual research of experience and memory, a simultaneous preoccupation with form and estrangement from form’s origins. zenas proa’s glazed stoneware works ground the space into the three-dimensional realm and hold this weight accordingly. The visual motifs of proa’s works exist in direct reference to the Arbol de Vida and Circle of Friends, traditional Mexican candelabra silhouettes, along with abstract images translated from waking dreams, slumber, and early visions. Distinct yet overlapping strategies from these five artists yield both an expansion from and a tethering to the deeply personal. Intuition and fixation give way to an unearthing – both matter of life and matter of death.

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Gwen Hollingsworth (b. 1998 Los Angeles, CA; based in Los Angeles, CA) uses drawing and painting to highlight the psychology of space and its impact on our realities in an effort to create new visual and spiritual paradigms. Her practice explores phenomena in the natural world as a way of seeking sanctuary and self knowing. She received her BA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2020.

Drew Miller was born in the Pacific Northwest in 1989. He now lives in New Mexico where he finds creative motivation for drawings from local adobe architecture, instances where historical and contemporary construction technologies meet and how people live in and around those buildings. He has participated in exhibitions at Harpy Gallery, Over Under Room, Good Naked Gallery, SOIL gallery, and Spring Break Art Fair. Recently, he was invited to participate in “Viewing Room”, a studio visit-based project hosted by the Drawing Center, NY.

Chauncey Penney (b. 1997 Indianapolis, IN) is a self-taught artist based in Tucson, AZ who imagines self-expression as a virtue. His perspective is that of a queer and trans shapeshifter unraveling guilt and shame through his creative process. Predominantly working with oil pastel along with other media, Novi is inspired by color and childlike wonder. Trauma informed and magical, his work explores the honesty of uninhibited creation.

zenas proa (b. 1992, Dallas, TX, they/them) is a queer, mexican-american interdisciplinary artist seeking to bring subtle and numinous visions across the stream of dreams into a tangible earthly reality grounded by clay. they currently live and work in Tucson, AZ.

Kid Violet is an ex-poet based in Tucson, Arizona.

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Everybody is a gallery in Tucson, AZ that primarily works with emerging and perpetually-emerging artists. Its beginnings in Tucson started as a warehouse project space from 2016-2018, followed by an iteration in Chicago, IL from 2019-2020. Its activity has been featured by Newcity Art, Vulture, Contemporary Art Daily, ART news, Art Viewer, Autre Magazine, Tzvetnik, Arizona Public Media, SFAQ, among others. Everybody is a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance.