Knight’s Move
May 3 – July 26, 2010
Opening reception:
Sunday, May 2, 2010, 5 – 7 pm
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
+1.718.361.1750
Curated by Fionn Meade
SculptureCenter is pleased to present Knight’s Move.
As the one piece on the board that moves either forward or backward but always laterally in the same gesture, the knight’s move is a tactical one, relying upon stealth, surprise, and sidelong views. This exhibition brings together artists prominent to the dialog of New York’s recent past as well as those at the very beginning of their careers. Curated by Fionn Meade, this survey of new sculpture in New York embodies an informed yet playful and questioning view of the contemporary.
Has Modernism and its various aftermaths approached the status of an inventory to be studied, borrowed from, and traded upon in ways that move beyond the anxiety of influence and endgame maneuvers? How can strategies of estrangement, appropriation, and abstraction exist alongside direct engagements with materiality, figuration, and storytelling? Can the makeshift, readymade, and precarious exist in dialog with the meticulous, obsessive, and finely crafted? Does political agency require a process of collaborative rehearsal? And how has the art of production challenged the presumed roles of performer and observer, director and spectator?
The knight’s move is a quixotic entry into uncertainty that demands ingenuity and a swift response.
It can be both Buster Keaton dodging into an alleyway as the pursuit rushes by, and the capacity to think two or three moves ahead. In New York, a city constantly inventing its present, the knight’s move evokes an embrace of the episodic and ever shifting, a willingness to articulate, envision, and stage what comes next.
Knight’s Move will be accompanied by a catalog featuring artist profiles and an essay by SculptureCenter Curator Fionn Meade. The catalog will be available in late June.
To read more, click here to view the full press release
Performance programs have been organized in collaboration with New York-based curator and writer Jay Sanders, expanding the exhibition’s view into New York performance, literature, and music. Alternately taking the form of a literary salon, nightclub, and incidental workshop, the exhibition hosts a series of sequenced events that redirect, overlap, and amplify the work on view.
Knight’s Move Performance Program
Sunday, May 2, 5-7pm (Opening Reception)
No Neck Blues Band
Stalwarts of the experimental music scene, the seven-member music collective No Neck Blues Band, also known as NNCK, punctuates the opening reception with inimitable grooves and ritual improvisation.
Sunday, May 16, 3pm
Charles Bernstein and Josef Strau
Poet, theorist, and literary scholar Charles Bernstein joins artist and writer Josef Strau for an afternoon reading that delves into the restless framing and re-framing of art, language, and life in New York, Berlin, and various elsewheres.
Charles Bernstein is the author of more than forty books, including All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (2010), published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Artist and writer Josef Strau has experimented with the roles of curator, musician and gallerist, co-founding the legendary Friesenwall 120 in Cologne, Germany, and operating Galerie Meerrettich (2002-2007) in Berlin until relocating to New York.
Organized and introduced by Jay Sanders.
Thursday, June 3, 8pm- Midnight
Yuji Agematsu, Tom Thayer, Circuit Des Yeux, and Mother Earth
An immersive evening of music and live performance features Tom Thayer’s eccentric combination of sound, puppetry, and animation; Yuji Agematsu’s durational exploration of New York City via slide projection and field recordings; and solo musical performances by Circuit Des Yeux (Haley Fohr), and Mother Earth (Kyle Clyde and Dylan Hay) throughout the building and courtyard.
Organized by Keith Connolly and Jay Sanders
Saturday, June 26
Joanna Malinowska, Anna Ostoya, Alexandre Singh, and New Humans
Times to be announced.
An afternoon and evening of programs begins with a participatory gathering hosted by Joanna Malinowska exploring the reversals and excess of gift exchange, and continues with a visual consideration of violence and desire by Anna Ostoya, and a performative lecture by Alexandre Singh on tangential thinking. A live set by Mika Tajima and New Humans concludes the evening.
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
For additional information or photographs, please contact Nickolas Roudané at 718.361.1750 or press@sculpture-center.org
