For the 2024 edition of The Armory Show, Jack Barrett is excited to show a dual presentation of new works by artists Haley Josephs and Ben Tong. Both Josephs and Tong's paintings possess a dream-like sensibility that lends to the emotionally charged nature of their works. Their respective practices overlap around the idea of memory, whether to commemorate departed loved ones, or to capture a fleeting moment in time.

The central feminine characters in Haley Josephs' compositions take inspiration from the artist’s late aunt and sister. The departed figures straddle two worlds: one foot in our lived reality and the other in what lies beyond. Joseph's characters are often depicted in naturalistic settings; the weather, sometimes foreboding, other times bright, reflects their emotional landscapes. Touching on themes of death and rebirth through personal narrative, these wanderers possess an inner strength and are met with a realization of their ability to overcome and rise above. The work contains a primordial dream-like quality, in which the characters have the space to explore life's cosmic unknowns.

Ben Tong’s oil paintings on canvas move beyond traditional representation, mining the fertile ground between a moment and its later remembrance. The objects in the compositions, in sumptuous colors ranging from deep violets to apricot, feel like approximations drawn from a dream-like state. Tong often forgoes a brush in favor of rags and a massage gun, bruising the color onto the painting’s surface, sometimes rendering dappled semblances of a still-life. Here, Tong freezes memory on the brink of vanishing and edges closer to a monument of the in-betweens of daily life.