SANDY BROWN is pleased to announce A Continuous Flow of Liquid, Air or More by Jim C. Nedd. The exhibition seeks to induce a para-rational state, somewhere between reality and fiction, as often expressed in the Caribbean oral tradition. It is the artist's first solo presentation.

Jim C. Nedd (b. 1991) is a Colombian artist based in Milan working predominantly with photography and music.

Forthcoming and recent projects include Grito – Las Brisas de Febrero, with Invernomuto, Liverpool Biennial; Pico – Un Parlante de Africa en America, with Invernomuto, Autoitalia, London; and Blues, with Lamin Fofana and Nico Premiere, Mishkin Gallery, New York.

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Was it the end of the summer or the beginning? What seasons register when you’re only meters from the equator - squat at the end of earth's conveyor belt, mouth open, receiving gift after gift after gift? Fucking Barranquilla - the first jagged rock to jump to crossing the river to Valledupar - no one’s gonna tell us if it was 3 days or 30. Jim’s cousins put a daylight leash around my neck. I couldn’t hear or interpret much but “Do not let dark fall on your back” was communicated clearly. Pretty sure one of them slapped me across the face to make sure I believed them. This wasn’t really a warning for my safety exactly … it wasn’t about avoiding thieves or kidnappers. They just didn’t know what might find me outside once the shadow swallowed the city. Would I be taken by what lay dormant under the sun - hissing in its sleep from under the brush, murmuring at the floor of the river? What power that rose up and buzzing and consuming - asphalt streets turning into the air. I was easily convinced - I would sit in my place in the audience and watch the show and not even look towards the black void of the backstage - eyes not wandering where the stage light fell off and all the secret machines and unseen hands whirred about powering everything. I was not ready to know anything about how the real work was being done, they made sure I knew that. This forced paranoia of the weight of night followed me through the day even. Quickly looking over my shoulder when I would catch a glimpse of my own shadow, a slight chill when clocking the black of my pupils in the mirror, an uneasiness with the darkness underneath my body when lying out at the tar sands beach.

It’s hot everywhere … inescapable, somehow more so at night. Near impossible to sleep - your skin twists up around your ears, begging for some remedy. At night I was held in some men’s boarding house near Jim’s family, huffing an unstable breeze from a feeble oscillating fan shared with the German sex tourists in the other bunks - looking out the open window - breathing in the over-brewed thick black air - listening to the big black hum pouring in. Leaves and bugs shaped like leaves scraping and screeching together, red-furred monkeys laughing, a foggy muted bass line from a Verbena far away - two stroke engines cutting banshee lines through the wake.

When Jim, Esteven and Duvan eventually took me out into the black howling night they were literally holding my hand, literally cradling me in a rotation of arms - balancing me blindfolded on the back of a motorbike like a dumb package. (Slight side note here: the outfit somehow never changed, activity be damned … just wanna mention that. Day into night - jeans, tank top, hoodie and sneakers maybe - all worn as well as skin, wet flesh on a wild body glimmering with scales. Swimming across the river at night - sucked through the back roads and alleys - a sweating head caked in powder turning to clay). Jim or another hero was there tossing splashes of burning water down my throat from glass bottles they had in their back pockets, pricking my nose with fingernails of cocaine out of plastic baggies from other pockets and baptizing me in clouds of talcum powder I could never tell from where - or why - but now it's clear all these protection hexes saved me from learning too much or seeing too much all at once.

I was kept in a hazy stupor and carried around with my hands bound - I barely remember anything. One moment that’s flashed to mind though is a raging sea of bodies, bikes and cars. Huge cresting waves crossing and falling into one another turning into a frothing brown rapid, tearing through a residential neighborhood like a landslide. I can’t hear it but I know there was music. Four people that looked like teenage girls threw themselves under the wheels of a moving car and immediately got up, laughing hysterically. That’s it. That’s all I can remember, still more than I deserve.

The windows erected now in this dead room are looking out on that same black air. Spirits smoked out of the depths and vitrined in these frames, somehow an avalanche of hissing and whispers moire patterning against sirens and squelching synths protruding between bass drum kicks as a hero turns to powder - then clay - then stone at the mouth of the river with broken flowers and burnt cigarette pieces littering its ceiling. A constellation spreads on the back like the trash hung in the air after a fireworks show, like scales twinkling along a fish’s spine. Silhouetted figures hushed under a thunderous pause while the DJ reconnects the decks. More whispers from the shadows. Spit peeled directly out of the monster’s mouth - the terrible beast that made everything. The unseen hand running the show. I don’t know how Jim did it but he did - you don’t deserve to see it either, but here we are. Enjoy the view.

– Ashland Mines