Ellie Hunter and Charlie Leese are multi-disciplinary artists whose creations seem pulled from an unfriendly speculative future. Deeply concerned with the normative body, both artists find ways of provoking a visceral response from the audience that rests somewhere near curious trepidation. While they have separate practices and haven’t collaborated before, their works seem to harmonize around similar materials (aluminum, vinyl, thread, woven photographs) as well as feelings of ensnarement/entombment. This is Leese’s third time showing with Bass & Reiner and Hunter’s second.

Charlie Leese holds a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. His sculptures employ enduring materials (cast bronze, welded steel, carved stone, etc.) to build forms that recall landscape and architectural models, allowing the viewer to consider shifts in scale relative to themselves. Leese has been featured in numerous exhibitions including YBCA, San Francisco; Ratio 3, San Francisco; Alter Space, San Francisco; The Battery, San Francisco; and The Wurks, Providence, RI.

Ellie Hunter is a visual artist based in NYC. Hunter locates her work inside spaces where bodies are heavily scrutinized. She explores the ways in which the pathologizing ethics of clinical institutions are absorbed into our everyday lives and anxieties, and can merge with spaces of fiction and fantasy. Hunter received her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University where she was the recipient of the VCU Graduate Thesis Grant. She has participated in residencies at Shandaken: Storm King (NY), Interstate Projects (NY), Rupert (Vilnius), Superdeals (Brussels), 2727 California (CA), and Ox-Bow (MI). Hunter’s work has been featured in ArtForum (Critic’s Pick), AQNB, ArtMaze Magazine, Kuba Paris, and more. She recently exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, and has an upcoming two-person show at Cordova (Barcelona