Shadow + Substance

Ortega y Gasset Projects (OyG) is proud to present Shadow + Substance, a solo exhibition in the Main Gallery by Reuben Telushkin, curated by OyG co-director and artist, Adam Liam Rose. Shadow + Substance features a new series of kinetic sculptures that explores how feedback loops, encryption, and iteration in Black cultural production foreshadows formal elements of programming, digital culture, electronics and computing. Unveiling and (re)covering the past in its present, the exhibition situates quilted textiles in conversation with the moving image, to blur the line between energy and matter, human and machine. Large-scale wood joinery and metal frames loom above the viewer while electronic motors charge 3D-printed synthetic gears with perpetual motion. The gears push looping vertical blocks of quilted codes into a circular flow — each quilt a sequence of encrypted code, constructed through block-printed, embroidered, and sewn components that repeat a hand-rendered character alphabet algorithm at random. The exhibition borrows its title from Sojourner Truth's words at the base of her iconic postcard portrait: "I sell the shadow to support the substance." In an era where the physical toll of information is ever-present, the materiality of data must be confronted. Textiles invite us to contemplate the oscillatory and cyclical nature of time; how old becomes new, obsolete becomes relevant, and output is patched back in as input. Inspired by Truth's journey from Northampton, MA to Detroit, MI — a journey mirrored in Telushkin's own trajectory — Shadow + Substance honors what Truth has long known: to affect power, messages must travel. Reuben Telushkin (b. 1988, Holyoke, MA) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Detroit, MI. He graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Hampshire College in 2012, and an MFA in 4D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2024. Telushkin’s practice moves between digital fabrication and traditional craft as a way to negotiate the increasingly destabilized boundary between virtual and tangible realities. He has exhibited at the Brecht Forum in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and has produced public commissions for Library Street Collective in Detroit. He has been awarded residencies at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME, ACRE Residency in Steuben, WI, Surf Point in York, ME and the Interactive Electronic Arts residency in Alfred, NY. He will be teaching Interactive Art at Wayne State University in Fall 2025.