Agony. Apathy. Ennui. Rage. The new works in No Gallery's latest exhibition luxuriate and thrash around in a space between action and immobility. What does it mean to face personal and collective demons with stakes too high to make a move—or too high to wait? With equal parts commitment, exhaustion and irony, each artist imagines fractured social landscapes while questioning the utility for activism, boldly declaring for either; isolation from or deep engagement in, the current moment.

JesseDraxler When Feel Anger What I Really Feel Is Self Hatred 2019 road sign acrylic spraypaint collage handcuffs 36x25x25 1

For Don't Just Do Something, Sit There, Jesse Draxler presents signature collages, in color for the first time, while his ambitious sculptural works take force into three dimensions. His uncanny photographic composites capture the disorder and fragmentation lurking within each of us. As their splinters and blind spots extend out into space, across objects and into language, the composites direct us toward constant threats of rupture and obscurity, which are closing in on us from all sides.

JordanJWeber PortableIsland 60x48x12in

Jordan Weber imagines existential threats both to the self and communities as a whole, assembling installations with socially and politically charged objects and images. For example, Soil Sample (38° 44′ 18.49′′ N, 90° 16′ 25.93′′ W) consists of a frame that is filled with earth taken from sites marked by racial oppression and resistance. The frame sits atop a chrome tire rim, which calls forth cycles of striving for achievement in urban America. Shined On (2019) features an image of a former gang member baring his modified teeth alongside the shot-up door and window of an armored vehicle. Together, the works invoke the constantly turning wheels of repression that characterize “civilization” in America and the tools used to attain and resist it.

MarkMulroney HI 2019 acrylic on paper 36x25

Mark Mulroney's large-scale paintings take a satirical view of systemic failures and personal alienation, questioning the role of representation in constructing internal and external realities. Two mural-sized works on paper implicate the artist and viewers in narratives of desire, disgust, and detachment. Additional pieces consider how we assemble the self and envision the other. Each work taps into the struggle against isolation, ambivalence, degeneracy, and aggression. They do not offer tidy solutions for a coherent self or society—nor an approach to their ills–proposing instead the problematics of solutions themselves.

NO Gallery's Don't Just Do Something, Sit There opens September 7th, with an opening reception from 6 to 9 pm, and is on view through October 19, 2019.