Terroir
Torey Akers, Jaydra Johnson
June 6 - 28, 2026
Opening Reception
Saturday, June 6, 2026
5:00–8:00 pm
Gallery Hours
Saturdays & Sundays, 12-5 pm
In Terroir, Brooklyn-based artist Torey Akers and Portland-based artist Jaydra Johnson interrogate desire in material terms, using want, rather than need, to unearth the buried histories of non-normative intimacy. Their work reinterprets classic expressions of longing such as the nude, Victorian lover’s eyes, and stained glass.
The word “terroir” refers to the ecological environment in which wine or other culinary items are produced, a nod to the inescapable marrow of place, physicality, and self. The term owes its etymology to a Latinate root that denotes both “earth” and “fright”, a reminder that terr-or and pleasure represent two sides of the same coin. Akers’ and Johnson’s practices both track the social construction of bodies, depicting what it’s like to miss somebody, real or imagined, at the end of the world.