“NO ATLAS” Exhibition

EFA Project Space

[Image: Courtesy of the 2015/16 SHIFT Residents]

This event has ended.

EFA Project Space presents NO ATLAS, an exhibition produced by our 2015/16 SHIFT Residency artists. The unique nature of SHIFT Residency draws out unspoken challenges and considerations in the lives of its participating artists, who dedicate a significant portion of their time towards supporting other artists.

Reflecting possibilities for navigating otherness at the intersection of time, place, and identity, the work in NO ATLAS maps territories known and unknown, real and imagined, material and spectral, playing out each artist’s relationships to alterity. Collectively, the group examines modes of displacement, using video, sculpture, installation, and performance as tools for investigation into origins, cosmologies, pedagogies, and the shifting dimensions of interpersonal relationships.

Christopher Carroll explores the perception of nature and landscape through the lens of nontraditional electronics. Through the data collected by these optical devices, he investigates the foreign nature of everyday surfaces and objects. His A Machine in the Garden video installation combines visualized data recorded with a 3-D scanner, juxtaposed with video of the physical location where the scans were made, and placed within a loose narrative. In another mediated narrative, Kerry Downey uses an overhead projector to respond to a fishing trip Downey took upstate with artist and mentor Angela Dufresne. Downey’s subsequent video and performance explores the relationship between fishing and painting, mentor and mentee. As Dufresne ties flies to mimic nature to catch a fish, Downey imitates Dufresne, taking on gestures that relate not only to fishing and painting, but also to intergenerational feminist and queer legacies and affects.

Yasi Ghanbari’s video installation New + Now grapples with the fluctuating sensations of belonging and isolation that occur through the use of social media platforms. Actors, costumed in social activism hashtags, ride hoverboards in a green-screen space evoking an untapped digital potential. Embodying various subject positions, the actors recite lists, do yoga, mimic imago training, take directions, and are silent. Opening space for the gallery visitors to perform a role within the work, Marissa Perel’s installation will function as a reading room for the body. Visitors can rest, get close to selected texts by artist Gregg Bordowitz, writer Maggie Nelson and others, following scores and recordings to orient the reader’s awareness. Perel will perform within the installation with special guests for a presentation during the run of the exhibition. As an artist currently becoming a therapist, Jason Maas’s work, The Shadow Form Project, is deeply aware of the importance of being present for someone. Taking place as scheduled sessions at EFA and Maas’s Gowanus studio, Maas creates watercolor portraits of visitors as he listens to them share thoughts that may be easier to tell a stranger than someone they know.

Shervone Neckles’ The Give and Take multi-media installation with animation and sculpture, weaves together concepts of nature and science with objects and practices rooted in Afro-Caribbean tradition. The elements combine to create a fantastical interpretation of a creation myth – a matriarchal character that reclaims, recovers, and recasts her image. Sheetal Prajapati’s Meditation (Manifestation) consists of hand spun cotton configurations and an audio recording offering a speculative dialog between two texts exploring collectivity as a means of liberation, unity, and resistance. Prajapati’s Parallel Current (Eridanus and Srotaswini) explores the relationship between the body and the cosmos through the recreation of a celestial formation with worn bindis.

SHIFT Residency (formerly the Residency for Arts Workers as Artists) was launched in August 2010 to provide studio space and peer support for practicing artists who also work as arts professionals (administrators, curators, directors, and others). This program honors these individuals with a unique environment to build on their own art practices. Seven residents were selected based on their outstanding contributions to the art community plus their potential for artistic growth in a shared interactive environment.

Thursday, June 16, 6:30 - 9:00 PM: Performances by Kerry Downey and Marissa Perel