Mira Schor and Bradley Rubenstein “Imaginary Anatomies”

CREON Gallery

poster for Mira Schor and Bradley Rubenstein “Imaginary Anatomies”

This event has ended.

CREON presents Imaginary Anatomies: Mira Schor + Bradley Rubenstein, an exhibition of paintings and works
on paper. Schor and Rubenstein will exhibit work that is linked thematically, focusing primarily on the figure as a subject for
experimentation both visually as well as conceptually, on what Jacques Lacan described as the imaginary anatomy. Lacan
described the imaginary anatomy as a psychological map or image of the body, an internal understanding of the lived,
physical body. As a specular psychological construct, it represented the subject’s experiences of bodily parts and organs.
Rubenstein’s drawings display his continuing interest in expanding the parameters of the body’s endless possibilities. The
stable identity of the subject is questioned as the essential biological body literally disintegrates in front of our eyes and
metamorphoses into distorted and fragmented entities, incorporating a plethora of multiple personae and anatomical
prototypes. Following a long tradition of literary and artistic protagonists that stretches from the Golem, Dr. Frankenstein,
and Jekyll and Hyde, to more recent manifestations of cyborgs and aliens, the ambiguous moral but also indefinite
biological nature of the human condition is revealed.

Schor’s paintings present the figure as a reductively sketched archetypal protagonist in the symbolic landscape of a
philosophical cartoon. The figure is an agent of thought, reflection, and meditation, frozen in time as on an ancient
monument or Egyptian relief. Her iconic avatar is arrested in movement, approaching the cold and distant observation of
scientific illustrations faithful documentation of rare anatomical specimens. Schor shows the frailty of the human body:
despite its graphic, mechanized presentation: it wears a leg brace, it trips, it is knocked over by paint. The paintings are
reversible topsy-turvy diptychs: above or below, depending on how you hang the work, in one register the iconic figure is a
diagrammatic representation oppressed by aesthetic and economic imperatives, and in the other register the figure
dissolves, transforms, becomes lighter and more ethereal, as if depicting the human spirit triumphing over physical and
social restraint.

Mira Schor is a painter and writer living in New York City. Schor has been the recipient of awards in painting from the
Guggenheim, Marie Walsh Sharpe, and Pollock-Krasner Foundations, as well as the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett
Mather Award for Art Criticism and a Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Schor has had one person
exhibitions at Marvelli Gallery and Momenta Art in New York, and she is represented by CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles.
Bradley Rubenstein has been the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, The PollockKrasner
Award and a grant from The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. His works are in the permanent collections of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Detroit Institute of Arts, among others. Bradley
Rubenstein lives and works in Brooklyn.

Media

Schedule

from May 20, 2015 to June 10, 2015

Opening Reception on 2015-05-20 from 19:00 to 21:00

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