Catalina Ouyang “sister, lover, destroyer” and Bandler Firestone “Touch Railing”

Trestle Projects

poster for Catalina Ouyang “sister, lover, destroyer” and Bandler Firestone “Touch Railing”

This event has ended.

Curated by Jesse
In the Chinese folktale Legend of the White Snake, two serpent-goddess-demon best friends see their friendship threatened when the White Snake falls in love with a hapless human man and, to Green Snake’s dismay, decides to surrender her immortality in order to be with him. Trestle Projects is pleased to present sister, destroyer, lover a solo show by Catalina Ouyang that weaves Legend of The White Snake and joint-creative practices into a singular space to explore the capacity of friendship to queer heteropatriarchal narratives. Through ritualistic exchanges between Ouyang and her sister-snake, as well as an arsenal of weapons created by the artist’s friends from various cities, Ouyang gestures toward alternative possibilities where power is distributed differently. In turn, Ouyang’s exhibition is not only a call to arms, but an opportunity to examine conditioned tropes by presenting situations that call into question a thing’s ability to understand its own transformative desires: a television that wants to be a table that wants to be a demon, or a pair of masks trying to be demons that don’t know they are theatre screens. Ouyang will be pursuing her MFA in Sculpture at Yale University in Fall 2017; she has exhibited at Field Projects (NY), The Luminary (STL), and The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (STL), among others and has attended residencies at the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn), OBRAS (Evoramonte, Portugal) and Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, FL).

Meanwhile, in The Back Stairwell, a new project space in an unused stairwell, Deric Carner will present a site specific intervention aimed at producing non-optical connections within the viewer through touch. Created over several weeks of shaping, sanding and polishing, Touch Railing brings the sensuality of sculpture to the forefront by inviting viewers to caress and explore the varying textures of the object. The actuality and mindfulness required to experience this work is a counter to the increasing virtualization of life that ultimately alienates the body from its environment. Deric Carner reminds us that our bodies are responsible for mediating the relationship between interiority and exteriority, as well as being a fundamental part of how we orient ourselves within the universe at large. A video of Carner caressing the object in a bare domestic space will also be on a view and serves as an illustration of the body’s uncanny potential in relation to the built environment. Deric Carner earned his MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, NL and his MA from the University of Plymouth UK; he has exhibited internationally and has received numerous accolades including the San Francisco Arts Commission Grant and a MacDowell Fellowship.

Media

Schedule

from May 20, 2017 to June 14, 2017

Artist(s)

Catalina Ouyang

  • Facebook

    Reviews

    All content on this site is © their respective owner(s).
    New York Art Beat (2008) - About - Contact - Privacy - Terms of Use