“Afterimage” Exhibition

inCube Arts

poster for “Afterimage” Exhibition
[Image: Kanako Hayashi "Practice for water dance" (2016) still image from video, courtesy of the artist.]

This event has ended.

​​InCube Arts and Residency Unlimited (RU) are pleased to present Afterimage, an exhibition that brings together the work of four of RU’s current artists-in-residence: Kanako Hayashi, Mille Kalsmose, Peter Depelchin and Phil America.

Afterimage brings together a diverse range of works by four artists, all bound by that which is not explicitly shown. The title refers to an image that appears in one’s vision after the original has disappeared ­- a visual ghost that insists on its own presence by burning a temporary mark in the sightline. Each work leaves empirical evidence of an action through histories, relationships, movements, or events, all relating back to the physical presence of the body. On display are manifestations of these traces, leaving one to wonder if, or to what extent, an apparent action had in fact taken place.

Kanako Hayashi’s work explores the language of underwater choreography in order to develop the physical gestures used to create her immersive drawings. Repurposing bodily movement taken from her early years as a synchronized swimmer, Hayashi’s final drawings are the static leftovers from this solitary performance. As a hint to the work’s creation, Hayashi includes a simple video in the installation, which shows her practicing these gestures in the water, studying the range and limitations of the body’s motion in this restricted environment.

Mille Kalsmose presents Substitute Family, an installation consisting mainly of five anthropomorphic sculptures, each referring to a member of a family unit - the core kinship bond that gives value to one’s presence. Playing with the practical limitations implicit in having a body, the forms are only stand-ins - not unlike our own temporary houses for our souls. Questioning where the material and ethereal combine to create what it means to be human, these imperfect surrogates attempt replication through their size, form, and color, but remain self-aware of their inability to achieve consciousness or build relationships.

Peter Depelchin’s Voguing Jesus conflates contemporary dance movements with iconic historic representation, taking inspiration from the Pietà, a visual that has appeared in his work since 2014. In this drawing installation, Depelchin focuses on the fluid, feminine posture typical of these renaissance bodies, illuminated by his discovery that when the figures are rotated into a vertical position, they appear to be in the middle of a dance rather than a death scene. The resulting tableaux vivants, created in situ, appear as ghost images traced directly onto the wall, suggesting their temporal instability not only in the space of the gallery, but also in the larger historical narrative.

In Phil America’s The Perilous Fight, the artist displays photographic evidence of an exhibition mounted deep inside the New York City subway tunnels. The works on display in this hidden gallery are a series of flag sculptures, created by the artist, each embroidered with a different type of gun representing a specific national incident. In this dark, unlikely exhibition space, the flags appear frozen in a moment of being tossed by the wind, despite the still air that surrounds them. In contrast to their transient placement, unlikely to be seen, the flags are emblematic, serving as a tribute, memory, reminder, and warning of the violence so prevalent in the American national identity.

Kanako Hayashi received her MFA in the Inter Media Art from Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan in 2013, and attended Chelsea college of Arts and Design University of the Arts London in Art Theory from 2010-2011 (Exchange Program). Hayashi presents installations and gives performances to illuminate the memory or history of particular sites in Japan and beyond. The shows Hayashi has participated in include: Open Studios with Process Space, LMCC’s Art Center at Governors’ Island, NY (2014); Grace Exhibition Space with Fountain Art Fair, NY (2014); “Between you, me and the Lamppost”, (AIT) Arts Initiative Tokyo(, 2014)“ Portfolio 2013”, island-medium, Tokyo(2013); “THE DAUGHTER OF TIME”, αM Project 2011, Gallery αM, Tokyo(2012); “TRANS ARTS TOKYO”, Tokyo (2012); “Skin & Map”, Competition of Aichi Triennale, Aichi(2010) etc.

Mille Kalsmose is a Danish conceptual installation artist, based in Copenhagen and New York. She is working in various medias such as photography, video, light, sound and objects. She investigates the way identity is constructed through a continuous relation to the “self” and “the other”. She asks what is an “I” and how does an “I” come into being in relation to others. Her work often comes out in large scale installations and commissioned work. She holds a Master from UAB, Barcelona and attended SVA, New York.

Peter Depelchin’s work creates a new reality containing a symbiosis of art history and topicality. His consistent oeuvre digs into the subconscious of the spectator and takes a detailed look at collective archetypes. His visual vocabulary is informed by and creates universal imagery that draws from the past and reflects on the present, focusing on particular elements of art history. By linking these to a creative and associative process of thinking, peculiar images come into being that subsequently reveal themselves to the spectator. Through this process, he attempts to breaks open the collective consciousness, starting from the concept of the ‘human identity’. He searches for the ‘human being’ and the ‘being human’ using humanity as his starting point.

Phil America (b. 1983) is a California-raised artist, writer and activist. He has worked and lived throughout the US, Europe, Asia and Africa, concentrating on individual moments of freedom while looking at relationships with class, gender and race. In his work he uses performance, photography, writing, video, installation and sculptures, searching for a better understanding and connection to his subjects while bringing about an interpersonal relationship between the viewer and himself.
His past work ranges from doing solo museum shows in collaboration with the UN, ILO and the US Dept of Labor to doing an art bar with Absolut Vodka to giving 3 TED Talks to running a school for Burmese refugees with over 1500 students per semester. Phil’s 3rd monograph,Above The Law: Graffiti On Passenger Trains, shows photos from his series Above The Law which has been show in museums and galleries on every continent on the globe.


CURATOR

Rachel Steinberg is an artist, curator, and organizer based in Brooklyn. She is interested in digital and time based media, collaborative practices, science fiction, and examining the role of alternative art spaces. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute, and is currently the Gallery Director at SOHO20 Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Steinberg previously served as the Assistant Director at NURTUREart Non-Profit, where she was the founder and curator of NURTUREart’s semi-annual video exhibition Videorover. She was also an active member and co-organizer of Trade School New York from 2012-2014. Steinberg also works selectively as an independent curator, having curated exhibitions both locally and internationally.

Media

Schedule

from April 09, 2016 to April 30, 2016

Opening Reception on 2016-04-09 from 19:00 to 21:00

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