HOT AUGUST NIGHT: MEMORY AND MATERIAL

NAT ABRAMSON, CHARLIE ALT, EUGENE OFORI AGYEI, MARK BURCHICK, SÉBASTIEN DERENONCOURT, CARI FRENO, NATHAN HARPER, MAREN HENSON, DOT JACKSON, JESSICA JANE JULIUS, SARAH LEGOW, JACOB LUNDERBY, NABEEL NAVEED

Screening / Friday, August 1, 6 to 9 PM

Grizzly Grizzly presents Hot August Night: Memory and Material, a one-night-only video screening featuring the work of thirteen artists selected through our nationwide open call. These artists explore the intersections of memory and material, where stories linger in gestures, landscapes, domestic rituals, and glitching technologies. Through diverse approaches, they examine how memory is embodied, externalized, fractured, and carried through time, revealing what is remembered, what is distorted, and what is left behind.

As Grizzly Grizzly members reviewed the submissions, we were struck by recurring themes of grief, transformation, and release—emotional responses shaped by our contemporary socio-political moment. These works operate in poetic, irreverent, intimate, and speculative gestures, offering responses to the conditions of now. They inscribe personal and collective history into clay, tape, glass, and digital static, showing how memory becomes embedded in material form, over time.

Some artists focus on the body, using it as both a vessel and a site of change, resilience, and ritual. Eugene Ofori Agyei performs a quiet act of care and identity, applying red clay to his body while pulling at his hair, a gesture that speaks to the complexities of diasporic belonging. Nabeel Naveed animates a haunting painted loop in which a figure reaches endlessly toward falling relief, conjuring urgency, futility, and suspended aid. Nat Abramson offers a symbolic self-portrait in which inner change is made visible, rendered as something mutable and always in motion. Charlie Alt reflects on grief and post-mortem care through pen-and-ink drawings on paper towels, transforming disposable materials into a site of looped reflection on love, loss, and memory held in the body.

Others draw memory from landscape, light, and domestic space, using stillness and material presence to evoke emotional depth. Jacob Lunderby’s digital animation, inspired by field guide sketches, evokes the meditative rhythm of walking through a pastoral setting, blending observation and imagination. Dot Jackson creates a brief but poignant encounter as a shaft of light slices through a darkened room, turning the simple act of opening a door into a symbol of transition and awakening. Sébastien Derenoncourt collages footage from late-1990s New York, conjuring a chaotic, tender city shaped by fleeting encounters and longing. Jessica Jane Julius layers microscopic footage of her own saliva with archival images of Earth from space, collapsing scale and distance to explore the entanglement of body, planet, and time. 

Several artists turn toward technology, media, and belief systems, examining how digital infrastructures and ideological distortions shape memory. Mark Burchick, using a hacked 1990s Gameboy camera, explores the visual and cultural aesthetics of conspiracy culture, tracing how fringe beliefs are distorted and absorbed into the mainstream. Maren Henson deconstructs disinformation and control through layered drawing and video, mapping the hidden architecture of power. Nathan Harper resurrects a scratched CD from his teenage metalcore band, now a distorted sonic artifact, to reflect on the breakdown of early digital utopias and the erosion of youthful optimism.

Memory returns to the domestic sphere, where identity is formed and family mythologies take shape. Sarah Legow reimagines a childhood fantasy through animation and staged photography, as two girls gleefully invade the sacred “man cave,” subverting gendered space with playful irreverence. Cari Freno turns inward to examine the father-daughter dynamic, layering images of her father with acts of psychological excavation to map a nuanced emotional terrain of distance, longing, and inherited roles.

Join us for a summer night of time-based works that move between the personal and the collective, the microscopic and the cosmic, the poetic and the political. These thirteen artists remind us that memory is not merely a fleeting, ephemeral state—it loops, falters, distorts, and persists, always taking shape through material.

ARTIST BIOS:

Nat Abramson is a student and artist currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. Charlie Alt is an artist based in Pennsylvania whose work combines dark humor and the surreal. Eugene Ofori Agyei is a Ghanaian-born artist and educator living and working in New York. Mark Burchick is an Emmy-winning interdisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Sébastien Derenoncourt is a Delaware-based video and interactive media artist. Cari Freno is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator whose work investigates human relationships through video and installation. Nathan Harper is a Florida-based artist working across video, sound, and media archaeology. Maren Henson lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, making work about power and narrative manipulation.

Dot Jackson (née Vile) is an artist living in Detroit, Michigan, working at the intersection of fiber, material, and the domestic. Jessica Jane Julius is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator working across glass, video, and installation. Sarah Legow is a multimedia artist currently living in Portugal. Jacob Lunderby is an artist and educator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Nabeel Naveed is a painter and moving image artist from Lahore, Pakistan, currently pursuing an MFA in Philadelphia.