A New Sacred
Carolyn Oberst & Eden Seifu
March 14th - May 3rd, 2025
Storage
52 Walker Street
4th Floor
Tribeca, New York 10013
Storage is pleased to present A New Sacred, a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Carolyn Oberst (b. 1946) and Eden Seifu (b. 1996). Continuing the gallery’s focus on intergenerational dialogues, this iteration highlights two women who have reimagined the possibilities of Christian imagery, iconography, and notions of power. The show is on view from March 14 through May 3, 2025.
Since the 2nd century, artists have perpetually reinvented ways to display biblical imagery. The works in this exhibition are not a translation of text to image, but one in which universally-known hallmarks of Christianity are employed by artists to craft contemporary tableaus – more akin to the 19th century Symbolists’ visual metaphors. From different perspectives and with different intent, these two self-taught painters have harnessed this tradition to make work that is entrenched with political history.
Dismayed by environmental degradation, Carolyn Oberst created the pieces in The Crosses We Bear from 1990 to 1994. Ethnically Jewish and secular, Oberst has said of the series, “I felt that separate from the religious association, the cross shape would connote both a sign of pain and suffering as well as a call to action.” Deforestation, oil spills, and endangered flora and fauna are rendered in careful detail. Burning the Tree of Life calls to mind the blazing bush that God used to speak to Moses, though the hills licked with flames in the background point to an uncontained wildfire. In Endangered Birds, Oberst imagines a flock of different tropical avians gathered harmoniously in the branches of a tree. “When looking for which species to depict, I tried to find examples that were so common looking one would not suspect they were endangered.”
Eden Seifu’s singular aesthetic gathers and blends visual identities: from El Greco’s loose, elongated limbs to the characters of commedia dell'arte. Consistent throughout her practice is a sense of the sublime and sacred, often accompanied by Ethiopian Christian religious markers. A young angel is the focus of Two-Headed Cherub. Surrounded by sinewy wings, one face looks outward in awe while the other is filled with tears, like the iconic comedy and tragedy masks metonymous of the performing arts. In The Angel of Pilgrimage, the figure stands calmly in a swirling, abstract space. The surrounding evokes clouds with its airy brushstrokes but, instead of pure white, the artist has crafted a splendor of pastels. These two pieces recall the straightforward plane of pre-Giotto religious iconography, while other works like Acrobat warp the viewpoint in a way that echoes the covers of science fiction and fantasy pulp novels. Like the development of perspective during the Florentine Renaissance, her magpie approach to visual culture well represents the hyperspeed of our time.
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Opening Reception
Friday, March 14th from 6-8pmStorage Tribeca
52 Walker St, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10013Additional Programming To Be Announced
March & April, 2025 -
Carolyn Oberst (b. 1946, Philadelphia) is a visual artist whose colorful work is influenced by the different, yet interconnected worlds around her. Oberst’s multimedia practice is infused by the observed, contemporary world, as well as her internal world of intuitions and memory. Her work has been exhibited in recent solo exhibitions curated by Hannah Traore of Hannah Traore Gallery and Janusz Jaworski of Chashama. She has been included in group shows at El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, NY Artists Circle, and Limner Gallery, among others. Oberst has been featured in publications such as Cultured, Artnet, Art Summit, and New York Magazine.
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Eden Seifu (b. 1996, Boston) lives and works in Seattle. She has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at Cooper Cole, Toronto; Deli Gallery, New York; and Half Gallery, Los Angeles and her work has been included in group shows at 8th House Projects, Mexico City; Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto; Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Qingdao Art Museum, China, among others. She is a recent recipient of the Palazzo Monti Artist Residency in Brescia, Italy. Seifu’s works are in public collections at the Frye Art Museum, Washington and the Fairfield Museum, Connecticut.
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Storage is an artist-run gallery founded by Onyedika Chuke on the ideals of community, discovery, and connoisseurship. With locations in Tribeca and with a viewing room on the Bowery, Storage acts as an archive of makers that work in a range of materials and come from a wide demographic background. Half of the roster is dedicated to reinvigorating the careers of artists of historical prominence, while the other half focuses on nurturing rising artists. With a strong focus on art by women and people of color, Chuke guides Storage’s nontraditional approach to community building, commerce, and mutual aid.