How to Win; When to Quit
Dylan Teaford and Eme Tuttell
July 25th -  August 31st


KB is proud to present How to Win; When to Quit, featuring Eme Tuttell and Dylan Teaford. An exhibition in which materiality is subverted to question symbolic hierarchy.

Through material experimentation, Teaford challenges iconography and digital passivity. In recent works, found icons are remade into ambiguous objects that hover between the historical and the conceptual. In Lawn Sign Sigil, three found yard signs are mounted in a triangular form. The familiar shapes are preserved but transformed through material and composition. By casting and repositioning the signs, Teaford disrupts their original context and intended meaning. The work balances a human, intuitive sense of color and arrangement with a precise, digitally influenced fabrication. The result is an object that resists clear definition and remains open ended.

Tuttell uses processes of accumulation and arrangement to curate compositions that stray away from traditional representation drawings. Tuttell’s work treats the overlooked as sacred, by framing and displaying what is typically abandoned, she challenges notions of aesthetic worth. In Image Protector, Tuttell layers cutouts, scraps, and discarded materials against clear glass panels, preserving the fragile and ephemeral nature of these objects to give them new form and context. The sculpture invites a slower attention and a 360 view to take in all the aspects of the piece. The layers of found materials between the panels emphasizes her attention to composition. Through her practice of reframing, she challenges traditional hierarchies of value assigned to objects and disrupts the cycle of consumption and disposability.

Together, Teaford and Tuttell use material transformation to question how meaning is assigned and preserved. By working with familiar objects, they highlight how value is constructed. How to Win; When to Quit brings attention to what we overlook, and the shifting nature of significance.

Dylan Teaford (b.2002, Philadelphia PA), has a practice that hinges on digital manipulation and fabrication to produce physical oddities that exist between worlds—part social object, part historical apparition. Engaging with technology as a kind of sacred force, Teaford treats the digital not as a neutral tool but as an active participant in the creative process. This relationship, however, is never one-sided. Teaford insists on embedding intuition and embodiment into every stage of production, preserving instinctive acts of making within the “amber” of technological precision.

Eme Tuttell (b.2002, Clearwater FL), is an artist working in drawing and sculpture. Feeling dissatisfied with the traditional method of representational drawing, her work aims to confront the creation and circulation of images in the 21st century. Using street trash, bodily debris, and overlooked materials, she curates a collection of things centered around form, level of decay,and their visual connections with one another. Repurposing discarded objects is an investigation into the reclamation of things once thought or intended to be lost. The transformation of these objects into sacred artifacts via framing and display becomes an integral part of the work, challenging viewers to reconsider personal and societal notions rof value, consumption, and the limitlessness of filth.