SINGING IN UNISON, PART 15: GIMME SHELTER
Curated by Michael David

Presented by M. David & Co. and Rail Curatorial Projects at Art Cake
June 6 – 27, 2026

Opening Reception: June 6th 6-9PM with a cooking performance by Tomas Vu
Artist Talk: Saturday, June 27 at 4PM

M. David & Co. is pleased to present Singing in Unison, Part 15: Gimme Shelter, curated by Michael David in cooperation with the Brooklyn Rail’s ongoing Singing in Unison series. The exhibition features works by Lynn Basa, Jim Condron, Astrid Dick, Robin Dintiman, Kahlil Robert Irving, Helen O’Leary, Judy Pfaff, Rebecca Smith, Mariam Aziza Stephan, Rachel Eulena Williams and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung.

A few months ago, during a conversation between Phong Bui and the sculptor Rebecca Smith, Rebecca mentioned that she was preparing for an exhibition at Art Cake with my curatorial project, M. David & Co. Phong suggested it could become the basis for a Singing in Unison exhibition. I am deeply grateful to Rebecca, whose work and generosity made this project possible; to Phong, for inviting me once again to work within the Rail’s extraordinary program; and to Cordy and Ethan Ryman for providing their Kunsthalle-like space at Art Cake.

I felt compelled to curate an exhibition that was wild, chaotic, hanging together by a thread, that took risks—an exhibition with no obvious curatorial solutions. Something uncomfortable. Something capable of expressing and reflecting this complex moment in our troubled history: a country, and a world, facing enormous challenges with no easy answers, where taking risks are now crucial.

The exhibition takes its title from the Rolling Stones’ dark masterpiece Gimme Shelter—a cautionary song about an impending dystopian world that feels, unfortunately, as prescient and timely today as it did fifty-six years ago.

Some may find this exhibition in disarray, troubling—an exhibition that refuses to provide answers and instead poses questions for which there may be none. And yet, like the Stones’ dark and disturbing song (“A storm is threatening my very life today / If I don’t get some shelter, I’m gonna fade away / War, children, it’s just a shot away, shot way "), it ultimately offers a fragile glimmer of hope: “Love, sister, it’s just a kiss away, kiss away.”

It is my hope that this possibility for love—for connection, for survival—becomes manifest through the beauty of creativity in all its diverse expressions, made possible by our collective faith as artists in the impossible: the impossible act of continuing to make work in our studios; the impossible struggle of sustaining a practice against all odds, against reason, against despair.

The artists in this exhibition were chosen, in part, for their relationship to their choice of materials—their use of found, recycled, or nontraditional matter, or their subversion of traditional materials, transforming the commonplace into something charged and critical. In this way, the practice itself becomes a form of denunciation: of rising tide of fascism /authoritarianism, and nationalism; of the predatory accumulation of wealth by a few at the expense of those in need and the many; and of the willful blindness toward environmental catastrophe—an abandonment of collective responsibility that threatens us all, regardless of race, religion, wealth, or poverty.

A time to find and share shelter.

Shelters of every kind:
Shelter for survival and safety.
Shelter to fight for freedom.
Shelter to create and to be free.

This may sound naïve, but I do not care.

I am desperate to listen to every voice—all the different voices singing in unison:

The voice of radical sincerity.

Faith in the impossible made possible.

Michael David
Painter, Curator
May 10, 2026