"Cultural Fluency: Engagements with Contemporary Brooklyn" Exhibition
BRIC
This event has ended.
BRIC Arts presents Cultural Fluency: Engagements with Contemporary Brooklyn, an exhibition at BRIC Rotunda Gallery that brings together six artists whose creative engagements with the city embody its culture. This exhibition is curated by Erin Gleason, a 2012-13 recipient of the Lori Ledis Emerging Curator Fellowship.
Artists David Court, Aisha Cousins, Malesha Jessie, Hiroki Kobayashi, Martin McCormack, and Mark Reigelman all currently live or have recently lived in Brooklyn. Their work – which ranges from public art to photography to guerilla opera bombs – explores and portrays the borough and its diverse culture, while also impacting it. This is a practice that American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth cited in his 1975 essay “The Artist as Anthropologist”: “For the artist, obtaining cultural fluency is a dialectical process which, simply put, consists of attempting to affect the culture while he is simultaneously learning from (and seeking acceptance of) the same culture which is affecting him.” Nearly 40 years later, the artists in Cultural Fluency are doing precisely that, in the context of Brooklyn.
Some of the works in Cultural Fluency include David Court’s text-based pieces which will be presented throughout the show – in the gallery, the exhibition catalog, and promotional materials. His written words navigate spatial experiences and the ideas surrounding them. For the exhibition, Court will specifically reference the BRIC Rotunda Gallery space. British artist Martin McCormack will present a monumentally scaled map of New York City pieced together out of found maps (e.g. take-out menu maps, tourist maps, tattered subway maps) he has collected from all over the city. Malesha Jessie’s Guerilla Opera will loop on a television monitor, documenting the operatic performances she has given to surprised passersby in the barbershops, bodegas, stoops, and sidewalks of Bedford Stuyvesant. Mark Reigelman will construct a stoop in be installed in BRIC Rotunda Gallery, mimicking the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall where he placed his Stair Squares project in 2007, public furniture that accentuated and encouraged use of the civic space. Visitors will be able to sit and linger on the Gallery’s stoop, altering their perspective and becoming a part of the exhibition.
According to Lori Ledis Emerging Curator Erin Gleason: “This cross-disciplinary exhibition features artists who, through their work, purposefully and actively engage with Brooklyn, and in doing so become an essential part of its urban fabric. All of the artworks are defined by distinct moments, impossible to replicate in form and cultural exchange. By situating them together in a gallery context, a new dialogue emerges across time and society. My curatorial approach is to treat the exhibition itself as an art activity, using the same paradigm it expresses. Through its publicity materials, newspaper (catalogue), blog, and interactions with space, Cultural Fluency is participatory, seeking to expand beyond the confines of a gallery.”
About the Curator and Artists
Erin Gleason is an artist, curator, and designer based in Brooklyn. She studied Fine Art, Imaging Science, and Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania, and received her MFA in the Art/Space/Nature Program at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Gleason has exhibited and curated in the U.S. and internationally including FiveMyles Gallery, NY; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; The Pier Arts Center, Stromness, Scotland; and Shetland Museum and Archives, Lerwick, Scotland. She has created works for a variety of public sites, winning public art commissions for the Poetry Paths Initiative in Lancaster, PA and from the Arts & Theatres Trust for Abbeyview Park in Scotland. She is the co-founder/director of the Crown Heights Film Festival, co-editor and designer of the publication FIELDWORK (ASN Mutual Press), and recipient of a Russell Trust Award for research in Greenland.
David Court is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. He holds a Masters of Visual Studies degree from the University of Toronto, ON, and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has exhibited solo and collaborative projects across Canada and in New York, with recent projects for Printed Matter (with Josh Thorpe), NY; the CAFKA Biennial, Kitchener, ON; YYZ Artist’s Space (with Josh Thorpe), Toronto, ON; Flux Factory, NY; and the Toronto Sculpture Garden, Toronto, ON. As a writer, Court has published widely, and was recently involved as a contributor for Gareth Long’s ongoing publication project Who Invented The Desk? His other published work includes articles “On Determination: Josh Thorpe’s Ambivalent Flag” for Espace 98, and “Yam Lau: A Life of Re-creation” for the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Taiwan).
Aisha Cousins is a Brooklyn-based performance artist whose projects include public performance art scores (do-it-yourself art projects, as she says) focused on engaging African-American audiences. Her art scores have been performed on the streets of historically African-American neighborhoods from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Brixton, as well as inside institutions such as the Museum Of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; The Kitchen, NY; and MoMA PS1, Queens. Cousins’ work has been covered by such publications as the New York Times and New York’s Daily News.
Hiroki Kobayashi is a Brooklyn-based photographer originally from Hiroshima, Japan. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Kokugakuin University, Tokyo. Working in both black and white and color, he has produced varied bodies of work focusing on people and places in Brooklyn. Recent projects include solo exhibitions of his images at FiveMyles Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, both Brooklyn; and group exhibitions at FiveMyles Gallery and Skylight Gallery, Brooklyn.
Malesha Jessie is a versatile artist of both the operatic and concert stages. A native of Southern California, she received her Masters of Music degree in Vocal Arts from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and her Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from California State University, Fullerton. Jessie has sung throughout Europe and the United States, including performances with the Boston Pops Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, San Francisco Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. Venues include the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, LA, CA; Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NY; and the Orange County Performing Arts Center (Segerstrom Center for the Arts), Costa Mesa, CA. Jessie has worked with numerous notable conductors including John Mauceri, Steven Mercurio, Dean Williamson, John DeMain, John Alexander, Keith Lockhart, and Placido Domingo. She recently relocated from Brooklyn to San Diego, CA.
Mark A. Reigelman II is a Brooklyn-based artist specializing in site-specific product design, installations, and public art. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Cleveland Institute of Art, OH, and an Advanced Product Design Certificate from the Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, UK. Reigelman’s work has been exhibited in public spaces, galleries, and museums across the country including the Cleveland Museum of Art; Port Authority Bus Terminal, NY; and Brooklyn Borough Hall. He has worked with designers such as Isaac Mizrahi and Ron Gilad, and his work has been showcased in The New York Times, New York magazine, and L’uomo Vogue (Italy).
Originally from Liverpool, England Martin McCormack is a Brooklyn-based artist who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has produced “exhibitions” on various trees, walls, and embankments throughout New York City and in Colorado, in addition to exhibiting in a number of galleries. Recently exhibitions include those at Leo Kesting Gallery, NY, and Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn. In addition, he participated in the 2009 edition of Conflux City, New York’s annual festival for contemporary psychogeography.
[Image: Martin McCormack "The Great New York City Mapping Project" (2013)]
Media
Schedule
from March 14, 2013 to April 27, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-03-13 from 19:00 to 21:00