This show locates itself in the study. Studies are often confused with other room archetypes, but here, let’s set the record straight. A study is not an office (focused on business, productivity, decision making) nor is it a library (acquisition and storing of knowledge). It is a place for ideas to be taken out and used–a site for learning, reflection and imagination.
The study is a fitting place to start one’s exploration of Ficus Interfaith, the artistic collaboration between Raphael Martinez Cohen and Ryan Bush, because at the core of their practice is the exchange of ideas. Working as two, each work represents a sequence of compromises, pivots and hybrids carved out of an ongoing conversation between Cohen and Bush, the studio and the world, now and then.
The first room of Ficus Interfaith’s study operates as a kind of static menagerie of extinct and invasive species. It features a terrazzo bench pushed up against the long wall opposite the entrance. From this perch, you can gaze at the other work in the room—an image of a single Bachman’s Warbler (a migratory songbird presumed extinct). The frame bears a small brass plaque at the bottom engraved with the bird’s taxonomy. There is no song. You might hear stones turning in the next room.
The main space features two terrazzo tables laden with touchable, yet unopenable books whose subjects and titles were created by the makers. Some of the titles hold clues for reading the work, others are puns. On the walls, a more practical library makes itself known. All the materials that get grinded into Ficus Interfaith’s kaleidoscopic terrazzo slurries are gridded on the wall from crushed pearls to broken glass. Stuck in time next to one another, material hierarchies begin to fail. It is in this failure one can observe an ongoing interest for Ficus Interfaith: the durability of categorization. The titles on the table suggest a kind of sorting as do the materials sunk in the tables. Ficus Interfaith is always dealing with categories as they try to tell stories through the amassing of uncanny aggregates and material histories. Their work reminds us that rocks are some of the oldest storytellers we know.
The final tableau unfolds in a pair of adjoining rooms. It is anchored by a sunflower painting—made from all the extra material used in the show—that hangs near a dysfunctional filing cabinet labeled ‘Ideas, Floors, Tables, Misc, Recipes.’ The sunflower is a recurring image in Ficus Interfaith’s work– repeated once every show. The filing cabinet is a facsimile of their own in Queens. Across from this pair is Classroom Ossuary, a laptop charging cabinet, found on the street and retrofitted with handmade custom cedar drawers that serve as the final resting place for wishbones, deer bones, a fossilized dinosaur bone, teeth, and grape stems. As its title suggests, this piece plays with the decorative qualities of final rites and where those aesthetic needs end and emotional ones begin.
Ficus Interfaith: The Study is on view in the Upstairs Gallery through May 17th, 2025.
