Curated by Katelynn Dunn
Artists: Rafał Żarski, Lee Gilboa, Carlos Franco, Lucas Yasunaga, Kenji Yamada

Opening Reception: Friday, April 15, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
On view: April 14 – April 27, 2022

The Pfizer Building, 630 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
Monday-Friday, 2-6 PM, weekends by appointment 

The School of Visual Arts is pleased to present Para Figurations, curated by MA Curatorial Practice student Katelynn Dunn. The exhibition focuses on the state of changing subjectivity in a world mediated by modern technology, bringing to light the idea that we may need a re-evaluation of conscious developments of our present reality. The exhibition creates the framework for universal thinking by presenting a group of international artists who explore art practice as a way to address subjectivity that is unattached to form. 

Lee Gilboa’s composition Redacted (2021) exemplifies intersectional thinking while demonstrating the potential for manifesting the non-factual through testimony. Her composition, Dyslexia (2021), presents an engagement with the theme of self-representation and the disorientation of misplaced identity. Rafał Żarski’s Vigilant Beholder (2021) shows the symbolic transformation of a body mediated by the screen, the mouse, and the keyboard into a deconstructed form. His sculpture Appointment (2021) offers insight into the relationship between the human body and objects in the home that it uses for work with office chairs set within a homelike structure. Kenji Yamada’s MITA Intercept (2020) provides an imagined space for community gathering and discussion that safe havens free speech. Carlos Franco’s 00:0_ (2020-2021) disrupts the space and demonstrates the prospect that visual and sonic culture are in a process of remixing by means of digital distribution. Lucas Yasunaga’s media sculpture Vessel for 10 suns (2021) offers a perspective on disembodiment with sound compositions made on a neutralized uncategorizable instrument. Transient composition 2 (2022) also speaks to destabilized categories by connecting household appliances whose unlikely interactions create new meaning. Finally, Swarm’s (2022) collective song made with the electronic beings’ response to light demonstrates the possibilities of non-human agency.

The exhibition hopes to provide insight into decentering oppressively mediated gazes toward forms of life, as well as show how changes to subjectivity may be occurring because of digital interactions. In a time when interior lives have been nurtured, but also exterior communication channels and movement ruptured, the exhibition offers artworks for contemplation about how our bodies, identities, and ways of perceiving are in states of reconfiguration.

Project supported/co-organized by the Polish Cultural Institute New York.   

ABOUT MA CURATORIAL PRACTICE, THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS, NEW YORK 

The Master of Arts degree in Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts is a two-year program that focuses on intensive professional training, with a thorough grounding in the study of art and exhibition history, research, and theory. Students work with leading experts in an academic setting and in internships around the world, providing continuous opportunities to gain practical experience, acquire intellectual breadth, and develop a professional network in the field. The program takes full advantage of the vast number of arts institutions in New York City and the professionals working here and visiting, who constitute our distinguished faculty and weekly guest speakers. Go to macp.sva.edu to find out more. 

Images: all artworks courtesy Rafał Żarski.