Two new art shows
come to ScultptureCenter
BY ROB MACKAY
SculptureCenter in Long Island City is
facing some very busy months.
The contemporary art museum, which
is located in a cavernous converted trolley
repair shop, held a reception to celebrate the opening
of two exhibitions on Sunday, Jan. 13, from 5 to 7 p.m.
One is Banu Cennetoglu’s first solo show in the
United States. This cross-disciplinary Turkish artist
uses photography, installation and printed matter
(i.e. images and texts) to contemplate the individual
human as related to the world’s complex geopolitical
forces. She likes to demonstrate that the personal is
political — and the political is personal.
The exhibition includes a moving image work
— for which Cennetoglu decided not to choose a
title — that presents the totality of her visual archive
from June 10, 2006 to March 21, 2018.
The other one is the multi-faceted “In Practice:
Other Objects,” which presents new work by 11
artists and artist teams that explore the relation
between objecthood and personhood. Part of the
ongoing “In Practice” series, which began in 2013,
the pieces in this show were chosen from an open
call. The assignment was to capture the moment
when a body becomes a thing — or a thing stands
in for a body.
For example, Takming Chuang’s clay sculptures
look at how value is assigned to bodies and objects
as they age. Meanwhile, a video installation by Sara
Stern charts connections between the industrial
and the organic. Kiyan Williams engages earth
as a material and metaphor linked to Blackness,
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diaspora, and transgressive identity via geophagy
(consuming dirt) by slaves in the Americas.
Both expositions will be on display until March 25.
Located at 44-19 Purves St., SculptureCen-ter
was originally founded as The Clay Club in
Brooklyn in 1928. Over the following decades,
it changed its name, moved twice, and tweaked
its mission while maintaining a focus on promot-ing
sculpture and emerging artists. In 2001, the
nonprofit purchased its present site, which was
then renovated as per direction from Maya Lin,
the landscape artist who designed the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. After a
multi-million-dollar renovation in 2014, the venue
now has 6,500 square feet of exhibition space on
two levels and a 1,500-square-foot courtyard for
outdoor exhibitions.
Art
Video still of Kenneth Tam's All of M. Courtesy of the artist.
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