It’s a few minutes before 2 PM on a dreary Wednesday afternoon, and Osmosis, an eccentric Brooklyn sculptor-slash-Drizzy-enthusiast, is fresh off of his debut solo exhibition, PLEASE IT IS MAKING IT THANKS :). Hosted by Kapp Kapp, an independent Tribeca gallery run by brothers Sammy and Daniel Kapp, the show doubled as not only Osmosis’ first time being in a showcase entirely under his own name, but also his inaugural taste of a certain tangible latitude, marked by a noticeable brightening of the spotlight. Companion (Hachikō), a jarring cockroach-like sculpture that greeted gallery visitors as soon as they stepped out of the showroom’s elevator, was on the cover of the Brooklyn Rail, and strangers were recognizing him on the street.
He gives the cigarette butt a careless flick towards a line of parked cars on Jay Street, and leads us back inside the studio building’s elevator lobby. “Everything so much so, in regards to the work and the reference material, really comes from a place of irreverence,” he tells me when we get to his workroom. He’s wearing a black T-shirt that reads “I SEE DUMB PEOPLE” in red ink, faded dark-wash jeans, a thin gold chain with a small ying-yang pendant, and a pair of black boots flecked with golden lace-holes. We’re seated a foot or two across from one another in identical rolling chairs, and in the purple-tinted reflection of his larger-than-life square frames, the space’s expansive city-view windows are reduced to four zesty mini-rectangles. “There’s no material that is precious to me,” he continues. “Everything is fair game. And this extends itself to any accolades or accomplishments I may have, too.”