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20/10/2011

Shahzia Sikander / Josephine Halvorson

Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

Shahzia Sikander
Sift, Rift, Drip, Shift

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. will present an exhibition of new large-scale drawings and an animated video work by Shahzia Sikander on view from October 21 through December 3, 2011. Entitled, Sift, Rift, Drip, Shift, the exhibition focuses on the process of transformation. Seeking elements with ‘possibilities’, Sikander culls symbols and motifs from her surroundings as well as historical sources, altering them to cultivate new associations. Abstract, representational and textual forms coexist and jostle for domination. Underpinning the visually compelling works is Sikander’s interest in paradox. Simultaneously espousing narrative and its absence, the works explore juxtapositions that enable multiple interpretations.

In the drawing titled Practice makes Perfect, Sikander takes apart rote learning by slowly transforming the act of repetitive writing into a cage-like form. Repetition is also employed as a movement in time, as elements in Hohlraum come together and fall apart. The idea of collapse is further examined in the drawing Walled States and the animation The Last Post.

Drawing remains a fundamental tool of exploration for Sikander. However ideas housed on paper are often put into motion in her animations, creating another form of disruption as a means to engage. While the animation, The Last Post can be seen as a metaphor for societies in flux, it is also an outcome of Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the Indian Subcontinent as well as the British opium trade with China. The music for this work is composed by Chinese American musician Du Yun whose work exists at artistic crossroads of chamber music, theater, pop music, cabaret, storytelling, visual arts, and noise.

Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan, and currently lives and works in New York. She holds a BFA from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan, and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sikander’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2006. Her work can also be viewed in a solo exhibition curated by Hou Hanru at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston through November 26th.

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Josephine Halvorson
What Looks Back

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present What Looks Back, an exhibition of recent paintings by Josephin What Looks Bae Halvorso n on view from October 21 to December 3, 2011.

Josephine Halvorson has an itinerant practice. She searches for objects willing to ‘look back’. Working perceptually on site, Halvorson’s paintings contain the reciprocities that develop between artist and object, and become testaments to time spent. The exchanges, which take place in a single session, test the limits of the body, witness the vagaries of weather and light, attract passing strangers, and - when materialized in paint - take on unexpected meanings.

The works on view were made in places as diverse as Shoshone, California; Canaan, New York; Akureyri, Iceland; and Shoreham, England. Halvorson's explorations are not only geographical, but also psychological. Chance encounters with objects in their environments realize internal glimpses of paintings unmade yet somehow anticipated.

Halvorson considers a painting successful when it asserts a life independent of its power to represent either the original object or the experience of its own making. She hopes these paintings return the attention that produced them and, as a group, evoke an ever- evolving narrative.

Josephine Halvorson holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and a MFA from Columbia University. She also attended the Yale Norfolk School of Art. Halvorson is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Vienna, Austria, The Tiffany Foundation Award, a NYFA Fellowship in painting, and has enjoyed yearlong residencies at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in Brooklyn. Her work was recently included in the group exhibition Americanana, at Hunter College Art Galleries curated by Katy Siegel and will be featured in the upcoming publication Vitamin P2 published by Phaidon.

Halvorson teaches painting at The Cooper Union and at Princeton University. She also serves as a Core Critic in the MFA program at Yale University. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. This is her second exhibition with Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

For additional information: Scott Briscoe at 212.929.2262 or scott@sikkemajenkinsco.com.

Image: Shahzia Sikander, The Last Post [still], 2010, HD video animation, 10 minutes

Opening Reception: Friday, October 21st 6-8PM

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street - New York
Opening hours: tues-sat 10-6pm
free admission

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