Parallel Play by Jonah Brock & Vivisepultura by Rory Holcomb Opening

Night Owl Gallery is proud to present Parallel Play and Vivisepultura, two concurrent exhibitions running from September 12 through October 18, 2025. In dialogue with one another, artists Jonah Brock and Rory Holcomb explore the body as lived experience, contested site, and unruly boundary—investigating its vulnerability, pleasures, and refusal to be reduced to mere image.

Across painting, textile, and installation, both artists reject dominant American forms of relationality and sovereignty, instead insisting on the body’s material presence. How aware are we of our own bodies and the bodies of others? How many times do we touch someone in a day? What is the ecstasy—and the fear—of contact?

Brock’s Parallel Play references the childhood stage of playing alongside, but not with, others, while Holcomb’s Vivisepultura—Latin for “live burial”—interrogates the ways one can be both living and dead, connected and isolated. From dog piles to mass graves, slumber parties to zombie hordes, their works navigate how bodies come together and fall apart—physically, mentally, erotically, and platonically.

By “staying with the meat,” as theorist Vivian Sobchack urges, Brock and Holcomb resist the cultural impulse to abstract the body into mere spectacle. Their works remain grounded in flesh—in its limitations, possibilities, and the essential friction of being with others.

Parallel Play and Vivisepultura invite audiences to confront the boundaries of the body and ask: What does it mean to mold, hold, and be held?

Exhibition Dates: September 12 – October 18, 2025Opening Reception: Friday, September 12, 5–9 PMLocation: Night Owl Gallery, 1735 Maryland Ave, Upstairs, Baltimore, MD

Host or Publisher Night Owl Gallery