Opening Reception: Thursday, Nov. 20, 5-8pm
On view: November 20 - December 20, 2025
Exhibiting artists include DAY, Estelle, Bobby, Kofi, Dezzy and Evolution.
On November 20th, The Gun Hill Six, a diverse collective of emerging Bronx artists, will take aim, so to speak, at the Artificial Intelligence boom, in their free-to-the-public exhibit "Human Touch" at Bronx Art Space from 5 - 8 PM.
In front of their own paintings, Dezzy, DAY, Kofi, Bobby, Estelle, and newest member Evolution, will serve live painting, dance, drumming, and storytelling at the opening, with additional happenings at the December 20th closing. The paintings will hang in the gallery the entire month, a first for the collective known for D.I.Y. pop-ups in unconventional spaces.
The Gun Hill Six was formed in March 2023 when Bobby Berardi and his former student Kofi met upstairs from Mike's Deli in the Arthur Avenue Retail Market and wrote a manifesto that devised "Mythism", a theory that the heroic process of creation should always be part of an artwork's story. They recruited a few more of Berardi's students, including then-17-year-old Dezzy, plus DAY, Kofi's classmate at Lehman College. They posted the manifesto –typed on strips of vinyl file tape- on the door of the Glenwood Power Plant, hung their paintings on its graffiti-covered walls, and put out a cooler of beer for guests daring enough to enter through a hole in the chain-link fence.
The GH6's second show, at Bronxlandia, a former Hunts Point train station turned arts venue, featured live performances by the collective's multi-hyphenate artists, including dancer/painter Estelle.
With "Human Touch", the collective intends to address –and indeed on a grassroots level combat- the apathy and fatalism with which people accept Big Tech's prized dystopian product: A.I.
"You hear people saying, 'Oh well, you can't put the genie back in the bottle'," says Berardi. "We can if we all want to. We can if we all decide to. We can if we all make enough noise."
The Gun Hill Six Collective
Bobby Berardi is a fingerpainter whose work revolves around the life of a single character, Desiree. He started teaching Art in 2007 in the South Bronx, a position he still holds today.
Nicholas Dwamena, known as Kofi, is a Ghanian-born painter, photographer, and drummer. His epic paintings often indict the West's literal theft of African art.
19-year-old Bronx native Jade Rosario, known as Dezzy, paints in ecstatic bursts of creativity, transcending dark thoughts and emotion in figure paintings oversized and confrontational.
Turks and Caicos-born, Dominican Republic-raised Estelle Walkin is a painter, dancer, and dance instructor. In 2025 she fulfilled a dream of dancing with a samba school in the Rio Carnaval.
Olivia, known as Evolution, is a Bronx-native storyteller, visual artist, and social worker. Using symbolism, realism, and erotica, her art at once challenges Western systematic oppression and reveals the depth of ancestral roots, fostering empowerment and healing.
Dana Leon, known as DAY is a Mexican-American artist whose self-portraits (sometimes in the form of whimsical pop art avatars) become haunting in the context of the medical conditions (Tarlov Cyst Disease, Crohn's Disease) with which they were created. Yet her UV reactive art literally glows in the dark, offering a little light in our collective dark times.