HOLDING

Kerry Downey + E Tubergen

October  9th  – December 4th, 2026

HOLDING is a two-person collaborative exhibition of paper works, sculpture, video, and performance by Kerry Downey and E Tubergen.  The artists’ friendship is the catalyst and container for making new work in the aftermath of ET’s breast cancer. The show holds space for two divergent practices – KD’s energized prolificacy and obsessive marking meets ET’s deliberate craftsmanship and material specificity. KD expounds, ET distills. Both artists create bodily immediacy through tactility and scale, invoking the viewer’s physicality. 

Heavily worked papers hang from iron brackets. A 50 foot collage is dragged down the street and rolled on a rubber cylinder then braced on the wall. A video documents their process; actions that function as performance and play. ET crumples and wads KD’s drawings then straps them to a stretcher on wheels. A matrix of relief shapes is used to make a rubber cast and is also used as a surface for sanding drawings and making prints. Repetitions accrue, as if circling a feeling they can’t put their finger on, like a tongue to a sore. Their formal and relational gestures create interdependencies between mediums and modes of working, and make visible their efforts of care. Their friendship holds space for destruction, obfuscation, grief, and uncertainty. HOLDING celebrates present participles, helping verbs, and ongoing actions. How are we being held? How are we holding on? 

Closing Event 
Friday, Dec 4th 5 - 7 PM 

with Kerry Downey, E Tubergen and Ren Loren Britton

Ren Loren Britton is a trans-disciplinary artist invested in Trans*Feminism, Technosciences, Radical Pedagogy and Disability Justice; living and working in Berlin, Germany. He makes multi-sensorial media installations that unseat sensory and communication hierarchies: serving the aesthetics of access & need. Trans*ness in his practice is prismatic, considering what crossings and cuttings produce pleasure for all. Minor his-her-hir-stories emerge in his work with the explicit aim of storytelling coalitions from the past to resource our imaginations and potentiate political possibilities for pro-Disabled, pro-trans*, anti-fascist work now.

Ren was recently a Temporary Assistant Professor of Networks at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany and a Guest Professor at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany. Ren has held residencies at Sonic Acts, Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen, MedienWerk NRW, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Sandberg Instituut, Rupert, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, PACT Zollverein, Vilém Flusser Residency Program. Ren has shared artistic work and received commissions within multiple institutions including ALT_CPH Biennale (NO), Constant (BE), Het Nieuwe Institute (NL), HKW (DE), Kunsthalle Osnabrück (DE), MACBA (ES), Martin Gropius Bau (DE), M-Cult (FI), MU Hybrid Art House (NL), Rupert (LT), Schloss Solitude (DE), Varia (NL), Sonic Acts (NL), Transmediale (DE), Utopia Kiosk (DE), Yale School of Art (US). 

10% of the RUTHANN’s portion of art sales will go directly to support the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement. Columbia County Sanctuary Movement organizes with immigrants and allies to collectively support, empower, and defend our communities. CCSM was founded in rural NY so we could build a base, create direct service infrastructure, and support a political home for immigrants.