Empathetic Geologies

10/4 – 11/8/2025

Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 12:00-19:00
（日月火祝 休廊）

Closed: Sun – Tues

KOKI ARTS is pleased to present Empathetic Geologies, a group exhibition featuring new and recent works by New York–based artists Alisa Bones, Alteronce Gumby, Simone Kearney, and Martha Tuttle. Each of the four artists engages with minerals and stones in unique ways that reflect an ongoing sensitivity to non-human matter. Curated by artist Martha Tuttle, Empathetic Geologies seeks to illuminate the spaces where mineral and human experience intersect—scientifically, emotionally, and energetically.

Minerals evolve, just like living species do.

On the one hand, this is obvious—only hydrogen, helium, and lithium existed after the big bang. Other elements, the building blocks of minerals, required different conditions, such as lower heat, or the possibility of nuclear fusion, to exist.

How did so few minerals and elements turn into the diversity we have on Earth?

The answer is that the richness, unpredictability, and volatility of the rare biological life of our planet yield a complexity and mineralogical diversity so far found nowhere else in the universe.

Once again, chaos reigns as a creative force. Water, pressure, heating and cooling, decomposition—all have made the elements that generate crystals and rocks, as much as they’ve created the conditions for plant life and eventually humans. Minerals have evolved whilst holding the hand of biological life.

Perhaps this confirms what many people know instinctively—rocks and biological matter have a connection, a shared development that goes deep. And despite the exploitative relationship human beings have had with minerals in the last few millennia, our longer story is one of symbiosis.

Stones attract because they often glitter and shine, and that fills us with delight. But one has only to look at art history to see an embodied affinity far more profound than purely responding to minerals for their superficial luster.

Since at least the Neolithic, generations of artists have co-evolved with geological matter to make a visual response to the connection between human beings and stones. It remains a continuous calling.

—Martha Tuttle

ALISA BONES (b. 1983, Kansas City, MO) is a New York–based artist. Her paintings examine interactions such as fluid flow, the formation of geological strata, and the accumulation of patterns over time. Her work investigates emergent qualities in natural systems through painting, using liquid and chemical dynamics as generative tools. Bones received her BA from Reed College, and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. Select solo exhibitions have been held at Forecast (Brooklyn), and Williamson/Knight (Portland). She has also exhibited in a wide range of group shows at New York galleries including My Pet Ram, Y2K group, and Deli Gallery.

ALTERONCE GUMBY (b. 1985, Harrisburg, PA) is a New York–based artist who explores macro subjects like cosmology and theories of energy through monochromatic paintings that embed resin, glass, and geological matter. Gumby received his BFA from Hunter College, and his MFA from the Yale School of Art. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Allentown Art Museum (Allentown, PA), Nicola Vassell Gallery (New York), KOKI ARTS (Tokyo), and Bode Projects (Berlin). His work has been shown in group shows at renowned galleries such as Jeffrey Deitch, Gagosian, Lehmann Maupin, Hauser & Wirth, and Gladstone Gallery. His work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, LACMA, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others.

SIMONE KEARNEY (b. 1984, Dublin, Ireland) is a Brooklyn–based multidisciplinary artist and writer. Her recent hand-carved alabaster and soapstone sculptures function as archaeological fragments from the psyche. The quality of searching in each sculpture comes into activation when it encounters the factualness of stone. Kearney received her MFA in creative writing from Hunter College, and her MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Guest Gallery (Brooklyn), Putty's Coronation (Brooklyn), Undercurrent (Brooklyn), and Artshack Gallery (Brooklyn). She has participated in group shows at Hirschl & Adler Modern (New York), Olympia (New York), Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto), and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York), among others. Select residencies include Shandaken: Storm King, Shandaken: Governors Island, Lighthouse Works, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Kearney teaches at Parsons School for Design and Rutgers University.

MARTHA TUTTLE (b. 1989, Santa Fe, NM) is an artist working between painting, textile, and sculpture. Her paintings incorporate mineral pigments into sewn and woven paintings. The intimacy of touch-heavy techniques such as spinning, weaving, and sewing create a tender relationship with the color of the ground stone. Tuttle received her BA from Bard College, and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. Fellowships and residencies include the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, and the Ucross Foundation. She will be the 2026 spring resident at the Atelier Calder in Saché, France, and is a 2025 resident at Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, MT. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Peter Blum (New York), Halsey McKay Gallery (East Hampton, NY), Rhona Hoffman Gallery (Chicago), Tilton Gallery (New York), and KOKI ARTS (Tokyo). Her work is in the collections of The National Gallery of Art, MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.