Ulterior Gallery and signs and symbols are pleased to present flicker / reform / dissolve, a group exhibition bringing together works by Annabel Daou, Selena Kimball, and Rachael Catharine Anderson. Opening on June 6, 2025, at Ulterior Gallery at 424 Broadway, #601 in New York. The opening reception will take place on Friday, June 6, from 6-8pm.

Spanning cut paper, painting, and collage, the exhibition brings together three artists whose practices engage the language of fracture—whether political, material, or perceptual—and examine what persists in the aftermath.

Annabel Daou's intricate works probe the tensions between permanence and impermanence, belonging and dislocation. Produced through a labor-intensive process of cutting away negative spaces, words and images appear caught in delicate nets of microfiber paper, held momentarily, like fragments of thought or memory suspended in air. For Daou, the act of cutting is both a gesture of revelation and concealment, uncovering what lies beneath while simultaneously withholding it. The recurring motif of thistles, which are native to her homeland of Lebanon, have appeared in her work over the years during times of personal difficulty or collective struggle. Here, their spiky needles pierce through the hand-cut lattices, evoking resilience and vulnerability. Through it all, language quietly asserts itself, puncturing the surface to declare: this side of history.

Selena Kimball’s archival collages disrupt fixed narratives by recombining historical debris into speculative, open-ended tableaux. While Daou’s practice reflects temporal fragility, Kimball’s ongoing series Atlas of air (2020–present) explores what can be lost in the ever-shifting rhythm of daily life. The works are composed of skies clipped from the front pages of The New York times—images stripped of headlines, captions, or any trace of the catastrophic events unfolding beneath them. Published daily, these emotionally charged photographs have fleeting lifespans, quickly submerged by the tide of news cycles. Yet the sky endures—a neutral, connective space linking event and viewer, reality and perception. By excising these skies from their original contexts and extending their temporal resonance, Kimball invites us to consider what is preserved, what is forgotten, and how meaning is shaped in what we see every day.

In contrast with the lengthy and long-drawn-out reflective processes of Daou and Kimball, Rachael Catharine Anderson's paintings trace the geometry of forms as she paints her subjects in situ. Each canvas is both a record and a spatial meditation made with perception, memory, and time. For this exhibition, the artist created three new paintings — a selection of plein air studies of narcotic, psychoactive, and poisonous plants as well as nude studies informed by emotional affects of jouissance, hysteria, and melancholy in reaction to environmental stimuli.

The dialogue created between the three artists explores the intimate and political architectures of memory, language, and form. Though distinct in practice, each artist shares an interest in fragmentation—of narrative, material, and experience—and in reassembling what has been dismembered or obscured. Together, Daou, Kimball, and Anderson create a conversation around what endures and how? Where do we find coherence—in form, in memory, in trace—inviting viewers to consider how we shape and are shaped by the stories we inherit and the structures we build. These artists offer no fixed answers, but instead open a space where meaning might flicker, reform, or dissolve.