NEW YORK, NY – My Need For Tender Loving Care, a group show that examines themes of love, need, understanding and identity, opens July 13 at All Street Gallery, 77 East Third St., in the East Village.

The show features work by artists Bow Young, Brenna Sastram, Emma June Jones, Fae Lugo, Faith Mikolajczyk, Hetta Gardener, Kaelin Martin, Lauren Schoepflin, Livia Weiner, Melissa Efrus, Sabrina Moore, and Virginia Cannella.

My Need For Tender Loving Care explores relationships as a site of exchange, the innate human need to be loved and understood, and how this need is complicated by social constructs of identity.

The obstacles faced while trying to fulfill human desires for love and understanding are not an inevitable symptom of existence, rather they are deliberate barriers indoctrinated by colonial powers. As the weight of identity filters and distorts relationships and these core needs, the artists in My Tender Need for Loving Care investigate the question, “What is the cost of relating?” Through painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, and textiles, the artists interpret this question and explore themes of connection and exchange.

Livia Weiner’s use of found objects and experimentation with texture and transparency in Lonely 1 explores the unsettling, hazy, and often painful memories of these realizations in childhood.

In Faith Mikolajczyk’s portrait Carmen Caska, the figure's movement elicits a feeling of being in throws of deep irreparable distress and discomfort permeating from within. It depicts the many ways in which this struggle against assigned identity exists not only in communities, but also internally.

My Need For Tender Loving Care opens wth a reception on Saturday, July 13, from 6 - 9 pm. There will be a closing reception on August 3 from 7 - 9 pm.