“It may help here to imagine magma, that messenger from below, and its almost psychotic blend of orange, yellow, black and red. Magma doesn’t wait to be retrieved by a stick, ladle, or wand. It finds its own way out. ‘What you hope is beneath your skin / is beneath your skin,’ Frank O’Hara once wrote. And, of course, what we fear is beneath our skin is there, too. Red confirms this – our – condition; no wonder it quickens. It stains the messenger, who has come to deliver the perpetually shocking news.” —Maggie Nelson Red as magma, as urgent. It quickens. Red that does not wait, that finds its own way. This exhibition seeks to engage with red as color, concept, material, memory, to explore both the aesthetic and the poetic in a group show at Persons Unknown. Featuring artists: Kailey Barthel (Baltimore), Dalia Berlin (Miami), Annika Marthinuss (MD), Karen Middleton (Richmond, VA), Katie Thompson Murphy (Johnson City, TN), Dana Richardson (Savannah, GA), Paula Saneaux (MD), Blair Simmons (NYC), Benji Stiles (Houston, TX), Blanquita Sullivan (San Antonio, TX), Asma Waheed (MD), Hannah Walton (TN), Karla Zamarripa (Dallas, TX).