NYAB Event - “What Remains” Exhibition

“What Remains” Exhibition

The Buggy Factory

This event has ended.

The Dorado Project at The Buggy Factory presents What Remains, a grouping of three artists, Bert Benally, Antonia Perez, and Claudia Sbrissa, who are engaging themes of legacy and inheritance, be it personal, cultural or ecological, within their own art making. Contributing to and expanding upon these concerns through their own inquiry and undertaking, the artists of What Remains offer site-specific installation and sculpture, crocheted wall-mounted works and Navajo sand painting in the context of an 18th century 2 story exposed brick carriage house in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn.

We are not the first … and ideally, we will not be the last. In art, as in life, the unfolding and progression of ideas and concerns in many ways rests on the foundation of that which came before … while at other times, a pushing against previous convention and norm, though occasionally chaotic and destructive, can give rise to opportunity and possibility where once it might have seemed there was none. Through the personal to the creative, there is always some thing, some form or object or idea that came before … vestiges of yesterday that can inform and influence still if only we allow them. In What Remains three visual artists; Bert Benally, Antonia Perez, and Claudia Sbrissa, bring their individual and varied practices, rife with concerns of legacy and inheritance, together in the history-laden Buggy Factory; a re-purposed 18th Century two-story brick carriage house in Bushwick, Brooklyn. In ways personal, cultural, and ecological, the concerns carried by these three artists assert that the past is not so much prologue as an active and contributing collaborator in the present, forever shaping that which is yet to be.

Built upon a foundation of his own Navajo culture and Native American tradition, artist Bert Benally employs contemporary art making strategies while simultaneously honoring and expanding the legacies and inherited lexicon of his tribal visual forms. Intending his work to speak first and foremost to the Diné, the people of the Navajo Nation, Benally straddles multiple ocular worlds and pulls from his personal experience and cultural custom as readily as engaging tropes of Modern and Post-Modern art making practice. One of his goals, among many, would be that of communicating to his elders while also creating something that hasn’t been seen before. The artist brings this commitment to a series of sand paintings, to be executed in situ, which will exhibit both traditional form and the multivalent concerns of contemporary urban life and it’s lingering impact on the larger environment. The inherent capacity of this art-making material to break down over time fits conceptually into an inquiry of how original intention is read over decomposition and influential chance.

Through re-purposing the cast-offs of contemporary society, artist Antonia Perez transforms our collective detritus and re-frames notions of value, art worth, and planetary impact within her varied and vibrant art making process. Perez crochets plastic grocery bags and re-purposes empty tissue boxes into new and engaging forms, from wall-mounted tapestries to freestanding sculpture and more. With an interest in textile design and the visual patterns of domesticity, the artist imbues worth into the formerly value-less, presenting the viewer with an opportunity to re-engage with the ubiquitous, left over objects of the day to day in new and unexpected ways.

Artist Claudia Sbrissa’s practice spans many disciplines including installation, drawing, sculpture, and photography to name a few. Coming from a family of artisans, Sbrissa mines a personal and familial legacy of engaging materiality and time-based labor, bringing this tradition to the call and response dynamic of site-specific installation. Through fiber, gold leaf, concrete and other media the artist both conceals and highlights long-standing forms within The Buggy Factory’s structure. Sbrissa also intervenes into hollow shapes along the structures interior wall where floor joists formerly held up what might have been a hayloft or 2nd floor storage area. By foregrounding and giving three-dimensional shape to these voids, the artist reactivates an original overlapping space wherein industry, design and intention once conspired in service to this larger contextual whole.

About The Dorado Project
The Dorado Project is a New York / North New Jersey-based project space and compendium of select local, national, and international contemporary art. With a focus on emerging artists and innovative works, The Dorado Project seeks to unearth and weigh the very best of arts’ rich reserves. The Dorado Project: mining art, sharing gold.