"We were poised to sign our new gallery lease in NYC in March 2020, the week the pandemic lockdown began, and by then had already been seeking a space already for about a year.  Instead, B Dry Goods is opening in a different location in the fall of 2022 with a show which acknowledges some of we have all been through during these intervening two and half years.

During this period, we have grown accustomed to wearing masks, transforming our faces and, in meaningful ways, transforming ourselves. Indeed, in these times of great vulnerability, we have often been alienated from one another, unable to see what is written on each other’s faces in the ways which might bring us closer, even while being sometimes forced to live apart. And yet we have found ways of seeing through and around our masks, and despite the limitations of expression they can impose, our wearing of masks has also become a symbolic gesture of dignity and care, compassion and solidarity. This show explores the masked face and the transformed face, asking what a mask can mean and what is behind the mask.

 The Masks We Wear asks what is written on our faces and aims to interrogate from an artistic-aesthetic perspective the idea of the mask.  Contemporary works by a variety of artists including Doug Henders, Lavaughan Jenkins, Patrice Yourdon, Ryan Wilde, Jayson Edward Carter, Lowell Boyers and others will be in dialogue with works in various media by René Magritte, Pierre Molinier, Mark McKnight, Fergus Greer, Christopher Makos, Kathe Kollwitz, Wayne Thiebaud, Marisol and others, as well as a selection of masks of various kinds, including small masks functioning as amulets from the African Dan peoples and a rare Nepalese Ritual Fungus Mask."

– Gabriel Boyers, Owner and Director