The Eccentrics / Rochelle Goldberg: The Plastic Thirsty / Now Showing: Jessi Reaves

SculptureCenter is pleased to announce the opening of three exhibitions.

The Eccentrics
Featuring Sanya Kantarovsky, Adriana Lara, Ieva Misevičiūtė, Eduardo Navarro, Jeanine Oleson, Georgia Sagri, Zhou Tao, and Tori Wrånes

The figure of the “eccentric”—a term for Russian circus performers used in the early 20th century—refers to the clowns, magicians, and acrobats who were the forerunners to the comic actors that inhabited the newly created space of film. A mode of popular entertainment that links ancient and modern technologies, the structural, emotional, and cognitive effects of the circus operate as an abstract framework for this group exhibition and performance program.

The participating artists embed images and objects with performativity, each work comprising a single act within the show. The works in The Eccentrics include several new commissions, some existing works, as well as adaptations of past works and a series of newly commissioned performances. Ieva Misevičiūtė (born 1982, Lithuania) has made a tongue, a recurring element in her performances, and turned it into a site-specific sculpture that also serves as a stage on view for the duration of the exhibition. Misevičiūtė has also created a new performance that will originate on, but ultimately venture off of the tongue. Georgia Sagri (born 1979, Greece) becomes a sort of news tamer in Sunday Stroll Undone and Redone (2015), calling for empathy as she reorders and reanimates news items and images through a series of sculptures on view and a new performance. Zhou Tao’s (born 1976, China) videos combine the clashes between corporate aesthetics, public space, industry, and political agency as seen in protests and social spaces, which often result in unintended spectacles. Jeanine Oleson (born 1974, USA) handles clay and copper, exploring their properties as constructive and conductive elements in a new 3D video and group of sculptures. Oleson is also premiering a performance as part of this material investigation. Tori Wrånes (born 1978, Norway) has created a kinetic sculpture with its own audience of disembodied viewers. She also created a new performance that referred to her sculptures on view. Sanya Kantarovsky’s (born 1982, Russia) Happy Soul (2015) is a projection of a character’s comic angst, both ephemeral and concrete, in a video that actually starts to touch itself. Kantarovsky also presents a new series of lithographic prints. Eduardo Navarro (born 1979, Argentina) has created a helmet that inverts time. In a group of new silkscreens, Adriana Lara (born 1978, Mexico) examines the dynamism found in bouncing, as well as the movement’s relationship to life in a new sculpture. 

Performance program
The Eccentrics performance program extends out of the works on view by four of the exhibiting artists. The performances are all new commissions. Tickets are free but limited and must be reserved in advance at sculpture-center.org.

Tori Wrånes
Saturday, January 24, 5pm

Georgia Sagri
Tuesday, February 2, 7pm

Jeanine Oleson
Tuesday, March 1, 7pm

Ieva Misevičiūtė
Monday, April 4, 6pm

The exhibition is curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib and is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with texts by Katrib and curator and writer Mark Beasley.

Rochelle Goldberg: The Plastic Thirsty
SculptureCenter is pleased to announce the first solo institutional exhibition by Rochelle Goldberg. Born in Vancouver, Canada, she is currently based in New York City. 

Goldberg stages sculptural topographies composed of living, ephemeral, and synthetic materials, such as crude oil and chia seeds, in combination with ceramic and steel. Transformation is enacted through her continuously evolving terrains, and further represented through the hybrid impressions of synthetic snakeskin and fingerprints. Molting and shape shifting, Goldberg’s work challenges the fixity of the art object. For her exhibition at SculptureCenter, Goldberg has hand rendered human-scaled sculptures in ceramic and steel that are evocative of hybrid fish forms and other motifs, enacting a psychological narrative around our post-industrial age. 

The exhibition takes place in SculptureCenter’s lower level galleries. It is curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib and is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication.

Now Showing: Jessi Reaves
SculptureCenter is pleased to announce Now Showing: Jessi Reaves. Now Showing is a program that highlights a single artwork or project in areas throughout SculptureCenter’s building and is an exploratory and flexible mode for presenting artworks and projects to our audiences.

Operating as both furniture and sculpture, New York-based Jessi Reaves’s unique sofas, tables, shelving, and other functional objects often look as if they have been turned inside out. The elements that are normally concealed or inside—such as foam cushions, stains, hardware, plywood, and other structural supports—instead become the primary textures and shapes for her works. In her pieces, the utilitarian and decorative aspects of furniture are recombined into new compositions that create their own logic and reveal their biography as a thing. For Now Showing, Reaves presents a chair and ottoman set, an artwork as well as a comfortable seat.

Also on view:
Anthea Hamilton: Cigarette Pipes

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; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Jeanne Donovan Fisher; the Kraus Family Foundation; the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation; the A. Woodner Fund; and contributions from our Board of Trustees. Additional funding is provided by the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation and contributions from many generous individuals.

The Eccentrics is supported in part by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, the Royal Norwegian Consulate General, and the Consulate General of Mexico in New York/Mexican Cultural Institute.

Rochelle Goldberg: The Plastic Thirsty is supported in part by the Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Foundation.