Fall 2011:
Sanford Biggers:
Cosmic Voodoo Circus
Short Stories
Curated by Isla Leaver-Yap
On view through December 4, 2011
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, New York
Exhibition hours:
Thursday–Monday, 11am–6pm
718.361.1750
info [at] sculpture-center.org
SculptureCenter is pleased to announce Cosmic Voodoo Circus, an exhibition of new work by Sanford Biggers commissioned through SculptureCenter’s Artist in Residence program. Cosmic Voodoo Circus is curated by Mary Ceruti, Executive Director and Chief Curator.
In Cosmic Voodoo Circus, Biggers exploits the carnival aesthetic to address profound issues of identity, the power of objects, as well as spiritual and cultural transmigration. At the center of Biggers’ installation is a new video titled Shake, the second part in an odyssean trilogy about the formation and dissolution of identity. Shot in Brazil with a Creative Time travel grant, Shake follows Ricardo Castillo, a Brazilian-born, German-based choreographer, clown, stuntman and DJ, through a transformative journey. From the ocean through the favelas, Castillo travels to a colonial palace and eventually returns to the sea as an androgynous, silver-skinned figure. (The first video in the trilogy, Shuffle, currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, beginning September 23, 2011 as part of the survey exhibition Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk–an Introspective.) The installation at SculptureCenter features several new sculptures including an empty trapeze swinging overhead, a large scale female figure inspired by African fetish sculptures, and a billboard sized minstrel-like toothy grin, a recurrent image in Biggers’ work.
Sanford Biggers has been included in several notable exhibitions including Prospect 1/ New Orleans Biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, Performa 07, the Whitney Biennial and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has also had solo exhibitions at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara; Grand Arts, Kansas City; Triple Candie, New York; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; and Matrix/University of Berkeley Museum, Berkeley. A solo exhibition will open at Mass MOCA in December 2011. Biggers currently lives and works in New York City.
Cosmic Voodoo Circus is made possible with the support of Beth Rudin De Woody, Toby D. Lewis Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, Jeanne and Michael Klein, and a grant from the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.
Short Stories
Part One, through October 2: Iman Issa, Ben Schumacher
Part Two, October 8–November 6: Danna Vajda, Rona Yefman
Part Three, November 12–December 4: Alejandro Cesarco, Ursula Mayer
Part Four, December 4: Events with Sarah Chacich, Angie Keefer, and Danna Vajda
Reading Room: Sarah Chacich, Angie Keefer, Matt Keegan, and Rita Sobral Campos
Short Stories, guest curated by Isla Leaver-Yap, navigates the fabricated spaces of representation. It questions the role of the art historian and critic as the best readers of an artwork, favoring instead the internal logic and fiction of the artist’s practice. The series will feature rotating solo exhibitions by six New York-based artists, an onsite reading room, as well as live readings and performances. Exhibiting artists include: Alejandro Cesarco, Iman Issa, Ursula Mayer, Ben Schumacher, Danna Vajda and Rona Yefman. The reading room, configured in collaboration with Angie Keefer, also features work by Sarah Chacich, Matt Keegan, and Rita Sobral Campos.
Through the artists’ independently fashioned narratives, Short Stories presents work engaged in the architecture of how to read and write the object, the image, and the practice. Short Stories takes the notion of ‘reading’ as a framework through which an artist might begin to construct personal positions and self-determined subjects.
Short Stories is generously supported by Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York.
About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution in Long Island City, NY dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new works and presents exhibitions by emerging and established, national and international artists. Our programs identify new talent, explore the conceptual, aesthetic and material concerns of contemporary sculpture, and encourage independent vision.
SculptureCenter’s exhibition program is generously supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the Kraus Family Foundation; the A Woodner Fund; the Lambent Foundation Fund of The Tides Foundation; Lily Auchincloss Foundation; Inc., and contributions from our Board of Trustees and many generous individuals.
For additional information:
Frederick Janka
718.361.1750 x117
press@sculpture-center.org
*Image above:
Courtesy the artist.
Photo: Jason Mandella.
