Jory Rabinovitz features a new site-specific sculptural work within a space recently created by the current renovation of the SculptureCenter building. Katrin Sigurdardottir's Foundation is a large-scale installation comprising a raised ornamental surface, mapping out the floor of a fictional 18th century pavilion. Liz Glynn's Ransom Room is a continually evolving installation exploring the ramifications of cultural destruction.
NOW SHOWING: JORY RABINOVITZ
SculptureCenter is pleased to announce Now Showing: Jory Rabinovitz. Now Showing is a program that
highlights a single artwork or project in areas throughout SculptureCenter's building. Working with artists
to find new ways of approaching the unique architecture of SculptureCenter, Now Showing is an
exploratory and flexible mode for presenting artworks and projects to our audiences.
New York-based artist Jory Rabinovitz will present a new site-specific sculptural work within a space
recently created by the current renovation of the SculptureCenter building. The work, Non Olet, starts in
the gallery space and extends into the men’s and women's bathrooms, returning to the original site, and
connecting these disparate areas. The title of the work references the Latin phrase “pecunia non olet,”
or “money doesn’t stink,” a reference to Roman emperor Vespian's “Urine Tax,” where urine was
collected from the public bathrooms of the working class and resold for various chemical processes,
entering the chain of commerce and trade.
Rabinovitz’s sculptural works investigate boundaries of material and metaphor and their social and
societal actualities. The actual compounds comprising exchange systems and their telestic potentials
are explored in sculptures that reimagine relationships between substances, considering their attributes
and utility.
Jory Rabinovitz lives and works in New York, NY. Rabinovitz has recently exhibited at Martos Gallery,
New York; Abrons Art Center New York, Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Off Vendome, Düsseldorf; Galerie
Balice Hertling, Paris, and Night Gallery Los Angeles. Rabinovitz has received numerous awards and
residencies including the The Rema Hort Mann Foundation visual art grant (2014) and the Emerging
Artist Fellowship, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY (2010)
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KATRÍN SIGURDARDÓTTIR, FOUNDATION
ICELAND’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE 55TH VENICE BIENNIAL (2013) ON VIEW AT
SCULPTURECENTER
New York City - SculptureCenter is pleased to present Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s Foundation, Iceland’s
representation in the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013. The work will be on view at SculptureCenter June
2–July 28, 2014 with an opening reception on Sunday June 1, 5-7 pm.
Foundation is a large-scale installation comprising a raised ornamental surface, mapping out the floor of
a fictional 18th century pavilion. Hand-made tiles form intricate patterns in the baroque style, and
visitors are invited to walk on the surface and experience it underfoot.
Foundation is conceived as a trilogy of installations. In the first, at Palazzo Zenobio’s Lavanderia in
Venice, the work intersected the walls of an ancient laundry. In Reykjavík, the work was located at the
Reykjavík Art Museum’s Harbour House, an old customs house in downtown Reykjavík. Now in New
York, it will occupy the vast gallery of SculptureCenter, a former trolley repair facility. Foundation
juxtaposes elaborate and ornamental decoration with the functional structures of these repurposed
industrial buildings. In each of its prior iterations, Foundation intersected with the building structure
cutting across interior and exterior walls and columns. The imprint of the architecture of the previous
venues is visible, drawing a new pattern. Thus, the real story—of inhabiting three different buildings in
three different countries—intentionally contrasts the fairytale of the baroque inspired floor.
The surface of the pavilion’s floor, symbolizing opulence and leisure, contrasted by the building’s
structure, referencing labor, brings up questions of value and structures of power. The floor replicates
artisanal tile construction and is handmade by the artist and her team as a way of questioning the limits
between art and craft, as much as the concept of authorship in relation to production. This imaginary
locus with its disjointed leveling, suggests an overlay in time and space, bringing to mind the mining of
an archeological site, as much as the prospective structuring of architecture.
In its entirety this piece is an investigation around the concept of drawing. Foundation, metaphorically
evokes the drawn line as the origin of thought, of artistic production as well as architecture and craft.
Navigating this abstract space—where the contamination between different disciplines and forms of
knowledge parallels the intersection of the floor plans—creates a unique emotional experience.
Katrín Sigurdardóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1967. Over two decades, she has explored the way
physical structures and boundaries define our perception of reality. Through unexpected shifts in scale,
united with a personal use of architecture, cartography and landscape, her evocative installations oblige
us to look at the world surrounding us in a new way.
On Foundation, Sigurdardóttir remarks:
"A floor is in itself a place. A floor that relocates defies conventional logic. What type of floor moves? A
surface that is preserved as an artifice, a relic extracted out of its original time and space. On the one
hand, this work is a meditation on the uprootedness of art and the complexities evoked by removal,
partition, transition and representation of art and artifacts. On the other hand I was thinking about the
practice and vocation of the artist in society, past and present"
Sigurdardóttir ́s solo exhibitions include: The Icelandic Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Reykjavík
Art Museum and SculptureCenter, New York (2013-14); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2010),
MoMA PS1, New York (2006), FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France (2006), Sala Siqueiros, Mexico City
(2005), and Fondazione Sandretto re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2004). Future exhibitions include MIT
List Visual Arts Center in Boston (2015), MASS MoCA (2015), and Parasol Unit Foundation for
Contemporary Art, London (2015).
The exhibition is organized by the Icelandic Art Center, and is curated by Illaria Bonacossa, director of
Villa Croce, Museo D’Arte Contemporanea, Genoa, Italy and Mary Ceruti, Executive Director and Chief
Curator of SculptureCenter, New York. A 128-page catalog accompanies the exhibition, published by
The Reykjavík Art Museum and Marsilio Editori, Venice. It contains texts in English, Icelandic and
Italian, by Hafthor Yngvason, Director of the Reykjavík Art Museum, Katrín Jakobsdottir, Minister of
Culture, Dorothée Kirch, Commissioner; the writers Eva Heisler and Kristín Ómarsdóttir; in addition to
Ilaria Bonacossa, Mary Ceruti and Katrín Sigurdardóttir.
This project would not have been possible without the generous support of the following: The Icelandic
Ministry for Foreign Affairs; Promote Iceland / íslandsstofa; Ingunn Wernersdóttir; Sara Peter; The Straus
Family Fund; Jill and Peter Kraus; Jerome and Ellen Stern; Island Tours Italia; Atelier 4; Icelandic Water
Holdings; TVG-Zimsen, and VAT Logistics.
The presentation of Foundation at SculptureCenter is supported by Hage Engineering PC; McBride &
Associates Architects; UOVO Fine Art Storage.
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LIZ GLYNN: RANSOM ROOM
SCULPTURECENTER PRESENTS ARTIST’S FIRST SOLO MUSEUM PROJECT IN NEW YORK
New York, NY - SculptureCenter is pleased to present RANSOM ROOM, Liz Glynn’s first solo project in a
New York museum. RANSOM ROOM will take place June 2 – July 28, 2014 with an opening reception
on Sunday June 1, 5 – 7 pm.
RANSOM ROOM is a continually evolving installation exploring the ramifications of cultural destruction.
Liz Glynn’s work has frequently referenced historic objects and artifacts to trace shifts in political,
cultural and economic value over time. In this new project for SculptureCenter, Glynn focuses on a
moment of total loss – the melting down of a large cache of precious metal artifacts during the Spanish
conquest of the Incan empire.
For RANSOM ROOM, Glynn works from the scant and conflicting historical narratives of the Spanish
conquest. In 1532, Inca emperor Atahualpa was seized and held as a prisoner by the Spanish
conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro. In an attempt to buy his freedom, the emperor offered to fill a
17 x 22 foot room, up to the height of his outstretched arm, with gold, and then twice over with silver.
The Inca valued precious metals for their ritual and ceremonial usage; for the Spanish, these objects
represented the potential to pay off their debt to the Crown. Thousands of individual objects were
carried long distances and gathered in the room. In spite of the delivery of the ransom, Atahualpa was
executed on the pretext of seditious intentions, and the Inca Empire rapidly unraveled. The artifacts
were subsequently melted down into ingots to maximize space on the ships returning to Spain.
For RANSOM ROOM, Glynn translates this mass of precious metal into red sculpture wax, traditionally
used in lost-wax casting of bronze, by creating wax surrogates for the lost gold objects. When the show
opens on June 1, visitors will find SculptureCenter’s ground floor rear gallery re-sized to a 17 x 22 foot
stucco room staged as a storied palace in Cuzco with a replica of a fountain, cement corn stalks
punctuated with golden maize, and the walls lined with wax panels. Over several weeks, wax objects–
vessels, cups, plates–will accumulate, having been cast and hand carried from various studio locations
in New York until the room is filled. During the final week of the exhibition, the collected objects will
then be melted down into ingots and eventually displayed on pallets. A written record will document the
objects that have been removed from the room.
Glynn’s work is engaged with the relationship between objects and narratives and how those narratives
reflect politics and power dynamics. She studies the material cultures of the past to consider the ways
in which objects embody, preserve, or challenge values and social systems of the past and of the future.
By recreating objects that have been lost to us, Glynn connects the rapacious destruction of material
objects and the obliteration of an entire culture.
Liz Glynn has presented large-scale exhibitions and performance projects at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art; Performa 11; and the migrating public art project, Station to Station. Her work has been
included in a number of important museum exhibitions including the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA
Biennial (2012); J. Paul Getty Museum's Pacific Standard Time (2012); and the New Museum's The
Generational: Younger than Jesus (2009). Born in Boston, Glynn currently lives and works in Los
Angeles.
About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution in Long Island City, NY
dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter
commissions new works and presents exhibitions by emerging and established, national and
international artists.
SculptureCenter’s major exhibition and operating support is generously provided by grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York State
Council on the Arts; Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc; Bloomberg Philanthropies; the Kraus Family
Foundation; the Lambent Foundation fund of the Tides Foundation; the Joan Mitchell Foundation; the
New York Community Trust; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts; the A. Woodner Fund; and contributions from our Board of Trustees. Additional funding provided
by the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; Goldman Sachs; A G Foundation; the Ken and Judith Joy
Family Foundation; the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, and contributions from many generous individuals.
Image: Katrín Sigurdardóttir, Foundation, 2013. Installation detail. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Orsenigo Chemollo, Venice.
Media Contact:
Frederick Janka
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press@sculpture-center.org
Opening Reception: Sunday, June 1, 5-7pm
SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves Street - Long Island City, NY 11101
Exhibition Hours:
Thursday – Monday, 11am-6pm
Admission:
$5 suggested donation