Blind Date
a Group Show (of) with Matched Strangers
Runs / February 6 – March 1, 2026
Reception / Friday, February 6, 6-9 PM
Hours: Sat-Sun from 2-6 PM
This February, Grizzly Grizzly invites audiences to swipe right on Blind Date, an exhibition that pairs the work of three artist personas, BBy, Memories of Masculinity, and Smoked Whitefish, through a playful, speculative matchmaking exercise. Each artist begins by creating a “dating profile” in the form of a personified artwork. These profiles are then shared, prompting each artist to respond to the other two as they develop new work. Rather than meeting over candlelight and forced conversation, the artists engage through this mediated exchange, producing an unusual choreography of desire, inquiry, vulnerability, and humor. The result is a space where encounters between works suggest flirtation, intimacy, reflection, and misrecognition across sensorial, material, and psychological terrain.
Blind Date constructs an environment where identity is not fixed but continually assembled, dismantled, and re-performed. Moving through personal, communal, and fictional memory, the artists pull apart familiar narratives and offer alternate ways of inhabiting the stories we tell about ourselves. Across sculpture, form, gesture, and affect, the works invite viewers to look closely, feel intuitively, and step into shifting worlds that oscillate between sincerity and satire, confidence and collapse, longing and bravado.
Profile*: BBy (he/they), self-described “party starter,” arrives with an ego-forward, shimmering persona masking the uneasy edges of performance culture. His work revels in nightlife fantasies; it is hyper-glamorous, frenetic, and addictive, while exposing the fragile architectures that hold him up. Behind the mirror sheen is a desire for visibility, connection, and escape. BBy’s responses to the other artists toggle between seduction and deflection, humor and confession.
Profile**: Memories of Masculinity (he/him/bro), brings a posture of swaggering authority that unravels on closer inspection. His sculptural presence slumps under the weight of nostalgia, discipline, and learned hardness. The work carries the scent of synthetic citrus and regret, folding humor into a critique of power, performance, and the brittle shell of the “alpha” myth. His exchanges reveal a longing to be held without being repaired, and a persistent ache beneath the bravado.
Profile***: Smoked Whitefish (they/them), offers a counterpoint of warmth, community, and exuberance in an ensemble-minded practice rooted in gathering, repetition, pattern, and humor. Their work tilts between celebration and melancholy, weaving together tessellation, food, friendship, and shared time. Their profile is earnest, open, lightly chaotic, and responds to the others with curiosity and generosity, folding their own multiplicity into the evolving conversation.
Blind Date operates as an experiment in compatibility, testing the possibilities of unexpected chemistry, missed signals, and the strange intimacies that might emerge when one artwork is introduced to another. What may unfold is not a single narrative but a triangulated one: tender, irreverent, and full of surprises. Whether the pairings result in love, chaos, or something beautifully unresolved remains an open question. Visitors are invited to enter the experiment, follow the threads, and see what takes hold.
Swipe right to visit the show.
Artist Bios:
* (b. 1993, Kansas City, Missouri ) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose practice is rooted in fiber, installation, and social collaboration. They entered Kansas City’s arts community through MYARTS (Metropolitan Youth Art and Technology for Students) and earned a BFA in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute (2016). They received a Rocket Grant and a Meow Wolf grant (with Bo Hubbard) to launch Alter: Art Space in Kansas City, and later received the Charlotte Street Fellowship Award, culminating in an exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (2019). They completed an MFA in Sculpture at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University (2025), and currently teach in Tyler’s Foundations Department.
** (b. 1990, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia) is a queer, transdisciplinary artist based between the U.S. and Canada. He earned a BFA in Studio Art with a minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality from Concordia University (Montreal) and an MFA in Studio Art from Syracuse University. ** has exhibited across the U.S. and Canada, including a solo exhibition at LAST Projects (Los Angeles) and as a featured artist in Nuit Blanche YXE (Saskatoon). Recent residencies include the Los Angeles Turner Residency (Spring 2022; Fall 2023), Governors Island (Summer 2023), and Mudhouse Residency (Greece, 2024), with upcoming engagements including a 2026 residency at the Peter Bullough Foundation and a fellowship at Vermont Studio Center.
*** (b. 1981, Providence, Rhode Island) is a printmaker based in Philadelphia and teaching at Kutztown University. She learned silkscreen at AS220 (2002) and later earned a BA in Political Science from Brown University (2005), followed by formative years building a studio in Buenos Aires (2005–2007). She completed an MFA in Printmaking at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University (2011), then founded NAPOLEON, a collectively run project space in Philadelphia’s Chinatown North neighborhood. *** was a CFEVA Career Development Fellow (2012) and a Fleisher Wind Challenge winner (Sculpture, 2014); her work has been exhibited internationally, and she has participated as a visiting critic and panelist at venues including MICA and SGCI.
* Artist identities will be revealed when the exhibition opens to the public.