Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity!
Gabriel Sierra: Numbers in a Room
September 20, 2015–January 4, 2016
SculptureCenter
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Long Island City, NY 11101
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SculptureCenter is pleased to announce the opening of two solo exhibitions.
Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity!
Anthea Hamilton presents new and existing works for her first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Investigating cultural appropriation and pop culture, Hamilton mines countercultures in music, fashion, and design (such as disco in the 1970s) and their entrance into the mainstream. Hamilton questions the representation of cultural phenomena through popular media in her sculptures and videos.
A centerpiece of her exhibition at SculptureCenter, Project for door (after Gaetano Pesce), is a new commission inspired by a model made by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce in 1972. Originally intended to be a doorway for a Manhattan skyscraper, the work was never realized. Composed of a man’s naked bottom, people would pass between his legs, which framed a doorway. In Hamilton’s version, she has reinterpreted the model, creating a large-scale sculpture that refers to Pesce’s original idea but within a new context.
Avant-garde design, niche products, fandom, and expertise inspire Hamilton’s exhibition. Verging on the absurd, the works articulate perverse fantasies, intimately binding the body to products and things. In her work, desire is on the brink of obsession, conjuring the simultaneous discomfort of striving and potential for satisfaction inherent to a fixation on a particular thing. In Hamilton’s exhibition, objects that aspire to elegance and luxury are expressed through pleasure as well as constraint.
Hamilton (born 1978 in London) is based in London and has had solo exhibitions at firstsite in Colchester, UK (2012); the Tanks at Tate Modern, London (2012); and the Chisenhale, London (2009). Recent group exhibitions include Don’t You Know Who I Am? – Art After Identity Politics at MuKHA, Antwerp (2014); the 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); the Glasgow International (2014); and Better Homes at SculptureCenter (2013).
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring a text by Ruba Katrib, SculptureCenter Curator.
Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity! is supported in part by a grant from The Henry Moore Foundation and public funding through the Artists’ International Development fund, which is jointly funded by the British Council and Arts Council England. Project for door (after Gaetano Pesce) (2015) is commissioned by SculptureCenter and fully supported by Valeria Napoleone XX SculptureCenter.
Gabriel Sierra: Numbers in a Room
Gabriel Sierra has created a new group of work in SculptureCenter’s lower level galleries for his first solo museum exhibition in New York City. Working site-specifically, Sierra follows the architecture and design logic and functions of interior spaces. Using narrative as a guiding principle, he creates frameworks that reconfigure the scale and geometry of the space and its objects.
By modifying and extending the guiding information of the exhibition space, Sierra has restructured the lower level galleries, effacing and confusing distinctions between the architecture, the institution, and the works that comprise the exhibition. The combination of alternative and existing floor plans, signage, and objects in the space all refer to the codes for viewing and maneuvering through the context of an exhibition.
Increasingly layered in Sierra’s presentation, the various structures comprising an exhibition in an institution create a mirroring effect, wherein each thing recalls another thing. This indexical accumulation makes it unclear exactly where the exhibition begins and ends, bringing into question the semantics of the various navigational prompts within art institutions. The exhibition structure asks that the visitor adjust to its new form.
Sierra (born 1975, San Juan Nepomuceno, Colombia) is based in Bogotá, Colombia and has had solo exhibitions at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2015) and Peep Hole in Milan (2013). Recent group exhibitions include the 56th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2013); The Ungovernables, New Museum Triennial, New York (2012); and the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011).
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring a text by Ruba Katrib, SculptureCenter Curator.
Gabriel Sierra: Numbers in a Room is presented with the support of Wendy Fisher and kurimanzutto.
About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists. SculptureCenter has provided thousands of artists the opportunity to create and exhibit new work and introduced New York audiences to hundreds of emerging artists as well as established artists from all over the world.
SculptureCenter’s major exhibition and operating support is generously provided by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Jeanne Donovan Fisher; the Kraus Family Foundation; the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the A. Woodner Fund; and contributions from our Board of Trustees. Additional funding is provided by Luhring Augustine and contributions from many generous individuals.
