V1 Gallery presents
What did I know of your days
An exhibition by Danielle Orchard and Nikki Maloof
OPENING: TUESDAY MAY 12. 2020. TIME: 10.00 -17.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD: MAY 13 - JULY 9. 2020
Like a skeleton, drawing varies widely in form and structure. Universal and unique, ancient and in continuous evolution, it facilitates and restrains movement. It can easily go unnoticed and unappreciated but is steady and immeasurably important in its hidden home inside the body. What did I know of your days borrows its title from a 2013 poem by Jane Hirschfield.
My skeleton,
you who once ached
with your own growing larger
are now,
each year
imperceptibly smaller,
lighter,
absorbed by your own
concentration.
When I danced,
you danced.
When you broke,
I.
And so it was lying down,
walking,
climbing the tiring stairs.
Your jaws. My bread.
Someday you,
what is left of you,
will be flensed of this marriage.
Angular wristbone's arthritis,
cracked harp of ribcage,
blunt of heel,
opened bowl of the skull,
twin platters of pelvis—
each of you will leave me behind,
at last serene.
What did I know of your days,
your nights,
I who held you all my life
inside my hands
and thought they were empty?
You who held me all my life
inside your hands
as a new mother holds
her own unblanketed child,
not thinking at all.
Danielle Orchard and Nikki Maloof met in drawing class in college and have been best friends and colleagues ever since. What did I know of your days is a meditation on drawing as medium, mutual inspiration, friendship and love.
Danielle Orchard, born 1985, lives and works in Brooklyn, USA. She holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College (2013), New York, USA. Recent solo exhibitions include Mother’s Magazines (2020) at Jack Hanley, New York, USA, 3PM (2019), V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark and Tennis Elbow (2017) at Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, USA.
Nikki Maloof, born 1985, lives and works in South Hadley, USA. She holds a MFA in painting from Yale University (2011), New Haven, USA. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Nino Meir (2020), Los Angeles, USA, Caught and Free, (2019), Jack Hanley, New York, USA and Shane Campbell (2018), Chicago, USA.
