PROOF OF CONCEPT
On May 24, 2025, WOO! Studios (formerly Studio Culture) opened our inaugural exhibition, Proof of Concept. The show marked a pivotal moment as we celebrated our official designation as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization.
Proof of Concept, which closed on July 19, introduced the public to the scale and ambition of our curatorial vision and potential, and featured both celebrated and emerging artists including Kori Newkirk, Zeb Zang, and Marcos Ramírez ERRE. The exhibition also included a special installation, 8 Outlets, presented by Brian & Ryan and with works by Diana Benavidez, Wendell Kling, Jason Sherry, Helena Westra, William Feeney, Cat Chiu, and Michael Hernandez.
Additionally, Proof of Concept showcased WOO! Studios’s vision to become an incubator for arts across all disciplines (including the literary and performing arts) with the exhibit, A Eulogy for Jane Doe, an immersive literary and visual installation. The show included poetry by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Georgia Bermingham, Jaime Estepa, Cathy Linh Che, Jolene Loveday, Amalia Mora, Aissa Perico, Simon Petty, Jacqueline Rose, and Paula Williamson, with illustrations by Claudia Paraschiv. The opening also served as a farewell celebration for Subcultra Curation/WOO! Studio artists-in-residence, Fedella Lizeth and German Corrales.
Kori Newkirk, Bumpis
Though differing in their specific granular themes, Newkirk’s works in Bumpis all playfully interrogate the communion and absorbency between various forms of materiality. For example, the title for his series of photographs of cloth and fencing, “Blue Mountains Black Diamonds,” refers to the shape of the cut-out in the cloth, but is also reminiscent of the many tarps and tents that provide shelter. “In skiing,” says Newkirk, “a black diamond run is the most difficult, and diamonds are formed under immense heat and pressure.” Another work (untitled) is comprised of tin cans connected through and modified with articulated shoelaces, and suspended on a piece of shopping cart. For Newkirk, these cans hold what one might imagine the inside of our heads look like–dark expanses with flickers and reflections. And in the eponymous piece, “Bumpis,” superabsorbent polymers, water, and sweat were combined and, over the course of the exhibition, the water and sweat evaporated. The result was a state change to the entire work–the polymers transformed from luscious slipper orbs into something else entirely.
Zeb Zang, A Complete Waste of Energy and Time
This exhibition takes its title from a phrase often used to critique the perceived inefficiencies of speculative or non-utilitarian work. It positions intuitive formal exploration as a legitimate mode of inquiry. The works on view draw conceptual lineage from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s 19th Century analysis of the Laocoon, particularly his distinctions between the visual and the literary arts. Within this framework, the translation of form across media becomes both a generative and destabilizing act. Each work asserts the presence of its medium—formally, materially, and environmentally. The exhibition foregrounds the relationship between artistic production and its ecological context, emphasizing how material choices are embedded within larger systems of resource extraction, energy use, and environmental consequence.
Marcos Ramírez ERRE, The Seed of Everything
The inspiration behind this exhibit came from a conversation between the artist, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, and WOO! staff about what WOO! Studios could become—and how the inaugural exhibition might illustrate this vision. The exhibit incorporates large vinyl text that reads, “All we have is potential,” which paradoxically captures the limitations as well as the boundless possibility of potential. Building off this theme, ERRE has inscribed “the seed of everything” as smaller text inside the larger, visually and textually alluding to enormity within the embryonic.
A Eulogy for Jane Doe
Created by writer Amalia Mora, A Eulogy for Jane Doe is a poetry and art project that honors the lives of hundreds of women whose bodies remain unidentified in the United States each year. These women–referred to as Jane Does–were the victims of murder and other heinous crimes. Photographs of objects found on ten Jane Does were pulled from several FBI and DNA databases. This source material was transformed by commissioning a series of illustrations of the women’s objects. The haunting yet tender nature of these illustrations was the provocation for ten poets to write eulogy poems celebrating the lives of these women. A Eulogy For Jane is a project of both collective mourning and celebration. It bears witness to and acknowledges egregious brutality while also striving to transform forensic objects from evidence of tragedy to evidence of simple moments of meaning and beauty.