Featuring: Sanya Kantarovsky, Adriana Lara, Ieva Misevičiūtė, Eduardo Navarro, Jeanine Oleson, Georgia Sagri, Zhou Tao, and Tori Wrånes.
The exhibition is curated by SculptureCenter Curator Ruba Katrib and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with texts by Katrib and curator and writer Mark Beasley.
Evoking the figure of the “eccentric,” a term for Russian circus performers, Walter Benjamin alludes to clowns, magicians, and acrobats as the forerunners to the comic actors who later inhabited the newly created space of film in his influential 1936 text, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The arena of the circus—where ancient rituals are passed through the ages into the present day—conjures laughter and wonder, disbelief, and fear. This is a space where assumed natural orders can be reversed and undone as demonstrated through displays of mastery over wild animals and fire, in moments where the rules of physics are seemingly defied, and in acts where the body and identity are truly malleable. While the artists in this exhibition work from 21st century perspectives, they similarly explore the significance of special effects created through analog methods.
Image Credit: Jeanine Oleson, production still, 2015. Courtesy the artist.
