Geary is pleased to present its inaugural show at 208 Bowery. A Feeling Falls Apart is a group exhibition with works by Paolo Arao, Jeanine Oleson, Kristine Woods, and Sun You, curated by Poppy DeltaDawn.

Feeling, a verb, is also a noun. Many English speakers understand that adding the -ing suffix to a word can denote action, but to add -ing can also form a verbal noun. Sewing Machine, Jumping Jack, A Reaping . A Feeling is a thing that helps us to interpret the world around us. Cognitive and emotional reactions form what our brains understand to be reality. What happens though, when our brains switch feelings rapidly? When a feeling turns into another feeling? When a thought becomes a feeling? What happens when a feeling falls apart?

Sun You presents a new paneled work, dotted with a landscape of fragmented forms above a watercolored floral scene. Also featured is a modest wire sculpture held together with magnets and pins on a plinth. A delicate balancing act, the arrangement of wires and found objects recall ikebana, or kothkoji (flower arrangement). Similarly, the operatives in Paolo Arao's stitched and stretched fabric canvases come together in a seductive composition that float between formal abstraction and material. "Imperfections" in the work present themselves as exposed seams and quavering geometries.

Jeanine Oleson’s two included works, Can you feel it? and Xallarap explore sensory communication of sound, sight and touch scaling the body to the larger world. Oleson’s work uses materials like copper and a conch shell to make these connections, finding ways to transmit through conduction and illusion.

Kristine Woods brings a new sculpture and prints to A Feeling Falls Apart, along with papier-mache works from her Stanza series. Over Sleeping Lips, Woods' new sculpture comprised of felted sheep's wool, is held aloft and spans the width of the ceiling. Installed in the gallery's storefront window, it steps with the foot traffic of the Bowery and recalls the founding steps of the legendary throughway.

Respectively, this group of artists represents feeling in atrophy and on the brink of collapse, and in this stage, new and expansive feelings are formed.

Paolo Arao is a Brooklyn-based, Filipino-American artist working in painting and textiles. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (1999) and was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2000). Arao has shown his work in numerous group exhibitions both nationally and internationally and has presented solo exhibitions at Glass Box (Seattle), Western Exhibitions (Chicago), Franklin Artworks (Minneapolis), Jeff Bailey Gallery and Barney Savage Gallery (NYC.)

Residencies include: The Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, the Millay Colony, Studios at MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, NARS Foundation, Wassaic Project, BRIC Workspace, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Fire Island Artist Residency. He is a recipient of an Artist Fellowship from The New York Foundation for the Arts. His work has been published in New American Paintings, Maake Magazine and Esopus. He is currently an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE.

Jeanine Oleson is an interdisciplinary artist working with images, materiality and language, which she forms into complex and humorous objects, instruments, images, videos and performances. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rutgers University. Oleson has exhibited and performed at venues including: Cubitt Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, LA; Commonwealth & Council, LA; Coreana Museum, Seoul; SculptureCenter, NY; New Museum, NY; Beta-Local, San Juan, PR; Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY. Oleson has received a Creative Capital Artist Grant, Franklin Furnace Fellowship and a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant and has been in residence at Macdowell Colony, Hammer Museum, New Museum, Smack Mellon Studio Program and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Oleson teaches at Rutgers University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Kristine Woods lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent shows include Such Is, a solo exhibition curated by Janice Guy at MBnb, NYC, New York (2019), Regarding & Regardless, a solo exhibition at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (2018), and The Portrait is Political, a group exhibition curated by Liz Collins at BRIC, Brooklyn, New York (2019). Woods spent the fall of 2018 in residency at Textilsetur Islands (Blonduos, Iceland), and is a recipient of a Creative Capital Artists Grant. Kristine Woods earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is full time faculty at The Maryland Institute College of Art. Woods had her first solo exhbition with Geary in 2019, Sparkling or Still, and was featured in a solo presentation with the gallery at New Art Dealers' NADA Chicago.

Sun You is a Seoul born, New York based artist. You has exhibited her work in galleries and museums internationally. Recent exhibition venues include The Pit, Glendale, Step Sister, New York, Queens Museum, Corona, The Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul, Scotty Enterprise, Berlin, VCU, Richmond, and The Suburban, Chicago. You was an artist in residence at Hunter College, Ace Hotel, Marble House Project, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Triangle Arts Association, Künstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral and the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program. She was also selected as Artists to Watch in 2016 by WIDEWALLS and 18 Artists to Watch, by Modern Painters, 2015.

You’s artist book, ‘please enjoy!’ with Small Editions, was purchased by the Whitney Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University and the NY Public Library. You heads President Clinton Projects, a curatorial project and co-runs a non-profit gallery, Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York. She is also a co-founder and core-member of An/other New York, a collective of Asian and Asian American visual artists, writers and curators.