Current Space is proud to present The Return of American Pest, an exhibition of works by Wickerham & Lomax.

Please join us for the opening reception on Friday, June 6th from 7-10pm!

Exhibit Runs: June 6 - July 12, 2025
Opening Reception: June 6, 7-10pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 1-5pm, by appointment, & whenever we're open (check out the show anytime you’re here)!

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THE RETURN OF AMERICAN PEST
Written by Wickerham & Lomax

FADE IN:
INT. PEST CONTROL CALL CENTER – NIGHT

A low-lit, humming call center. Phones ring intermittently. One line clicks open.

OPERATOR
Pest Control, how can I help you?

CALLER
Um... hi. I’m not even sure if this is the right place to call.
Something’s happening—I saw it last year, in Miami,
but now it’s... here. In Baltimore.

OPERATOR
Can you describe the situation?

CALLER
I don’t know. It’s not a pest, exactly. Not like... rats or insects.
It’s more like—something in the air? A kind of atmosphere.
It's thick, it’s everywhere, and it feels... full.
There are objects—hundreds, like, over 400—and they’re just... there. Watching. Waiting. Reacting?

OPERATOR
What do these objects look like?

CALLER
It’s hard to say. Some look like avatars.
Others like, I don’t know—tributes? Glitches?
There’s something emotional about them.
Like they’re carrying things—memories, missed connections, things you meant to say but didn’t.
It's unsettling, but not...bad. Just... overwhelming?

OPERATOR
Is it causing any harm?

CALLER
No, not harm exactly. It’s more like...the space is breathing. Like it’s alive.
And it’s listening. Reacting to everything that’s been happening—like the election, the silence after, all the... disconnection. It’s not something you can remove.
I don’t even think it wants to leave.

OPERATOR
So, what would you like us to do?

CALLER
I’m not sure. I guess—I just needed to say it out loud.
That it’s here. That something is happening.
And it’s not going away.

A pause. Faint ambient sound in the background.

OPERATOR
Understood.

\\[Call ends.\\]
FADE OUT.
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Wickerham & Lomax is the collaborative name of Baltimore-based artists Daniel Wickerham (b. Columbus, Ohio, 1986) and Malcolm Lomax (b. Abbeville, South Carolina, 1986). Their practice is based on the accelerated exchange of frivolous information, gossip, and codified language that crystallizes into accessible forms in hopes of giving dignity to that exchange.

Wickerham & Lomax are new media artists focused on the impact of cultural practices and productions as formative structures on the individual and the collective. Since 2009, they’ve utilized digital imagery, sculpture, CGI, video and the web –– to work across diverse media, curatorial platforms, and institutional contexts. The work presents questions of identity and the body, focused on the impact of digital technologies and social spaces on the formation of subjectivities and speculative corporealities. The collaborative has created an approach that allows components of their projects to work through a networked sensibility. More recently exhibitions have evolved to function as containers of swarm-like indexes, with each sign forming covalent bonds with those around it. Through employing queer sensibilities, speculative fictions, and networked virtuality the duo presents a discourse focused on identity, subculture, marginality, and connectivity as a way to complicate mainstream tropes. Wickerham & Lomax are influenced by queer theory, speculative fiction, human geography, and the socio-political as it relates to urban space.

In 2021 the Baltimore Museum of Art acquired the Wickerham & Lomax work Romance as Intrusion (2020) for its permanent collection. Earlier in the year Artforum commissioned Wickerham & Lomax for its Project series, which was published in the April 2021 issue.

Recent exhibitions by Wickerham & Lomax include Domestic QT & The Spatial Anomalies at von ammon co, Washington, DC (2020–21); The Writers Room at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD (2018); DUOX4Odell’s: You’ll Know If You Belong, commissioned by Neighborhood Lights, Light City, Baltimore (2017); Uncool at Terrault Contemporary, Baltimore (2016); Take Karaoke: A Proposition for Performance Art at Brown University, Providence, RI (2015); the Sondheim Prize Finalist Exhibition, Baltimore (2015); Girth Proof at Dem Passwords, Los Angeles (2015); the premiere of Encore in the AFTALYFE at the Artists Space booth, Frieze NY 2014; and BOY’Dega: Edited4Syndication for New Museum’s First Look series; DUOX4Larkin, Artists Space, New York (2012).

Wickerham & Lomax are the recipients of the 2020 Trawick Best in Show prize of the Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards and the 2015 winners of the $25,000 Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize.

Wickerham & Lomax are represented by Von Ammon Co.

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Current Space is an artist-run gallery, studio, outdoor performance space, and garden bar; nourishing an ongoing dialogue between artists, activists, performers, designers, curators, and thinkers. Operating since November 2004, we are committed to showcasing, developing, and broadening the reach of artists locally and internationally.

Thank you!
Programs at Current Space are made possible in part by supporting members like you and the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.