In Practice: Literally means collapse at SculptureCenter features newly commissioned sculptures, installations, and video works by eleven artists: Marco Barrera, Allen Hung-Lun Chen, Violet Dennison, Enrique Garcia, Ignacio Gatica, Cherisse Gray, Jessica Kairé, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Alan Martín Segal, Stella Zhong, and Monsieur Zohore. Opening May 12, 2022, the exhibition presents new works and artistic meditations that consider an expanded notion of the ruin that includes social tradition as much as physical infrastructure. Literally means collapse is organized by 2022 In Practice Curatorial Fellow Camila Palomino. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and a season of programming.
From built environments and structures of circulation to protocols and belief systems that shape social and political subjects, infrastructures are in a constant generative friction with decay. Rituals of maintenance are designed and performed to prevent what is constructed from being subjectively ruined. Diagnosing a contemporary obsession with ruins, artist and theorist Svetlana Boym writes, “‘Ruin’ literally means ‘collapse’ — but actually, ruins are more about remainders and reminders.” [Svetlana Boym, “Ruinophilia,” in The Off-Modern (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)]. Boym elaborates that, as sites, they can trigger both potential nostalgias and imagined futures. Existing among ruins is existing among spaces of asynchronous time — of histories and timescales collapsed.
The artists in the exhibition trace collapse through material and metaphor. Some artists in the exhibition examine the failures of cities and other containers of information, working with and against the anxieties of deterioration. Some remind us of the strategic disintegration and flattening of symbols and aesthetics. Others embrace the breaking down of space, time, language, and other familiar logics. In Practice: Literally means collapse is a series of overlapping studies into timescales of ruin and what doesn’t yet remain.
Camila Palomino is an independent curator and researcher based in New York City. Her research is invested in the aesthetic relationships between imaging and security technologies, urban infrastructures, and social memory. Camila is currently curatorial assistant at the Vera List Center, the 2021-2022 Curator in Residence at Abrons Arts Center, and the 2022 In Practice Curatorial Fellow at SculptureCenter. She has previously held curatorial positions and contributed research to exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, The Drawing Center, and the 58th Carnegie International. She is a curatorial consultant at Amie Gross Architects on a project that commissions artworks by Queens-based artists for new affordable housing buildings in the borough. Camila has also been a visiting lecturer in The Photography Program at Bard College. She holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Artist Projects
Allen Hung-Lun Chen carves architectural elements from a Taiwanese temple as a meditation on the rituals of maintenance of structures and tradition, and as an
offering to create a protective force around SculptureCenter’s building facade.
Inspired by an ancient ceremony performed at the Pantheon in Rome, Monsieur Zohore draws continuities between Catholic traditions and consumerism through
an immersive sculptural installation.
By exhibiting two parallel archives, Marco Barrera uses waterways as a cursor to trace and connect minor histories of industrialization and infrastructure.
Violet Dennison continues a poetic and systematic exploration of code and encryption in a large-scale knotted installation.
In two site specific sculptural installations, Stella Zhong builds speculations of unseen spaces and alternative forms of gravitational forces.
In a video and sound installation, Alan Martín Segal examines overlapping temporalities of technologies and systems that undergird our cities and routines.
Jessica Kairé expands an ongoing practice of translating monuments into soft and foldable sculptures to question how memory and history are shaped in public space.
Through photography and bricolage, Enrique Garcia makes visible ongoing legacies of colonial power embedded in the design of public space in Mexico.
Ignacio Gatica merges his collection of mechanically modified political memorabilia watches with ongoing research into declassified CIA documents to index the legacy of U.S. intervention in Latin America.
Cherisse Gray assembles a site-specific installation and charged environment that upends traditions of architecture and ornament.
Fred Schmidt-Arenales presents a film re-enactment of archival meeting minutes from a series of meetings from the 1950’s at the University of Chicago that defined urban renewal strategies that continue today.
About In Practice
SculptureCenter’s In Practice open call program supports emerging artists and curators in creating new work for exhibition at SculptureCenter. Since 2003, In
Practice has provided more than 230 artists with the essential resources of space, funding, time, curatorial support, and administrative guidance to help turn their ideas into reality.
Exemplifying the spirit of SculptureCenter’s mission, In Practice supports innovative artwork, fosters experimentation, and introduces audiences to underrecognized practice and new ideas. The program offers participants the opportunity to develop and present work in what is often their first institutional exhibition in New York City. Previous In Practice participants include Korakrit Arunanondchai, Fia Backström, A.K. Burns, Crystal Z Campbell, Aleksandra Domanović, Brendan Fernandes, Raque Ford, Jules Gimbrone, Samara Golden, Ellen Harvey, Madeline Hollander, Elizabeth Jaeger, Meredith James, Baseera Khan, Simone Leigh, Molly Lowe, Justin Matherly, Essex Olivares, Virginia Overton, Marlo Pascual, Sean Raspet, Rachel Rose, Xaviera Simmons, Josh Smith, Valerie Snobeck, Agathe Snow, Kenneth Tam, Marianne Vitale, and WangShui, among many others.
SculptureCenter opens the In Practice application season each spring for an exhibition to be presented the following year. More than 800 artists submitted proposals for the 2022 In Practice exhibition. To learn more about the program, visit www.sculpture-center.org/in_practice.
About SculptureCenter
SculptureCenter leads the conversation on contemporary art by supporting artistic innovation and independent thought highlighting sculpture’s specific potential to change the way we engage with the world. Positioning artists’ work in larger cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts, SculptureCenter discerns and interprets emerging ideas. Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter provides an international forum that connects artists and audiences by presenting exhibitions, commissioning new work, and generating scholarship.
Since relocating to Long Island City in 2001, SculptureCenter has presented works by over nine hundred artists through its annual exhibition program, and today, it is considered one of New York’s most important kunsthalles. Placing emphasis on investment, inclusiveness, independence, transparency, and rigor, SculptureCenter has developed a strong reputation for championing underrecognized and emerging artists, many of whom have gone on to celebrated and substantial careers; these include Nairy Baghramian, Sanford Biggers, Tom Burr, Liz Glynn, Rochelle Goldberg, Leslie Hewitt, Tishan Hsu, Rashid Johnson, Rindon Johnson, Ugo Rondinone, Gedi Sibony, Alexandre Singh, Monika Sosnowska, Mika Tajima, Jesse Wine, Turner Prize winner Charlotte Prodger and nominee Anthea Hamilton, and Hugo Boss Prize winners Anicka Yi and Simone Leigh. SculptureCenter continuously offers a dynamic series of free public programs and events including artist talks, performances, film screenings, and publications.
Support
Major support for the In Practice program is provided by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In Practice is supported in part by an award from the National
Endowment for the Arts. Leadership support of SculptureCenter’s exhibitions and programs is provided by Carol Bove, Lee Elliott and Robert K. Elliott, Jill and Peter Kraus, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Barbara and Andrew Gundlach, Jacques Louis Vidal, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, Eleanor Heyman Propp, Libby and Adrian Ellis, Benoit Bosc and Torsten Schlauersbach, Jamie Singer Soros and Robert Soros, Candy and Michael Barasch, Sanford Biggers, Jane Hait and Justin Beal, and Amy and Sean Lyons.
SculptureCenter’s annual operating support is provided by the Elaine Graham Weitzen Foundation for Fine Arts; the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation; A. Woodner Fund; Libby and Adrian Ellis; The Willem de Kooning Foundation; Teiger Foundation; Helen Frankenthaler Foundation; Cy Twombly Foundation; Arison Arts Foundation; public funds from 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 the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and contributions from our Board of Trustees, Director’s Circle, SC Ambassadors, and many generous individuals and friends.
Feature Image photo credit: Allen Hung-Lun Chen, Offering IV (an eave to curb the evil spirits), 2021, Cast aluminum, plaster, cement, ratchet straps, 72 x 96 x 36 inches, Courtesy the artist.
