FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Elsewhere, We Remain Unreadable
May 14 - July 11, 2021
Wednesday - Sunday, 12 to 6pm

KeyClub
By appointment only
Please email   robinwinters@mac.com or s@rapartist.org
Or send an instagram “DM” to either @shirtnyc or @rbwntrs

NEW YORK, NY––KeyClub presents Elsewhere, We Remain Unreadable, an exhibition featuring new work by Shirt on canvas and sculpture, as well as a selection of books that have been highlighted by the artist for viewers to read through.

Elsewhere, we remain unreadable. Elsewhere, we’ll continue to be confusing and confounding to so many. Elsewhere, we’ll be marginalized further, further erased, overlooked, forgotten. Elsewhere, we’ll be misunderstood, not cared for and not defended. We remain quite difficult to understand. We haven’t used the “right language,” or had the “right education,” maybe. Our brains have been rewired to produce rather than nourish. There is so much information to hold, to share. Any usable thought. An instance of brilliance. Something we hear. Something our eyes find. We want to translate it. We want to distill it. Highlight it.

Shirt is a multiform conceptual artist and writer working across rap music, performance, photography, painting and installation. Shirt’s work explores modes of storytelling that invite us to consider ways of unlearning and seek to propose questions such as: Who gets to be called an artist? and What is considered art?. Bridging connections between rap music and conceptual art, Shirt’s practice is a bricolage of language, sound and imagery wherein notions of authorship and publics are blurred to create a more expansive “readership.” 

Shirt (b. 1983, Queens, NY; lives and works in New York) received a GED from the State of New York Education Department in 2001 and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Academy of Art & Design in Basel, Switzerland in 2018. Shirt’s work has been featured in the artists’ own street exhibitions in New York and California, and in Switzerland at Kunsthalle Basel, and Helmhaus Museum, Zurich, amongst others. He has performed and staged interventions in numerous venues across Europe and the United States including The Royal College of Art in London, 104 Centquatre in Paris and The Seagram Building in NYC. In 2018, Shirt released an album titled “Pure Beauty” and played several shows across Europe. Shirt has released numerous albums including RAP (2014), and Nike Adidas Records (2015). Shirt’s work has been written about in NPR, Pitchfork, Billboard, The Village Voice and others.