“Transmutations” Exhibition

Bortolami

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Bortolami Gallery presents Transmutations, a group show focused on works which serve as conduits for material transformation and multivalent possibility.
The show is titled after a series by Jules Gimbrone, Traps and Transmutations, in which sound interacts with substances such as melting ice and bubbling water serve as analog to the transmutable body and trans experience. In the audio, Gimbrone’s own (highly modulated) voice repeats the words “convex” and “concave,” a reference to the peaks and valleys of soundwaves and an intimation of bodily physique.

Piero Golia presents a living artwork: a sleek marble pedestal displaying a wood ikebana whose surface is covered in mushrooms. The orange-red fungi will continue to grow throughout the course of the exhibition, altering and evolving its form. In this sense Golia functions as a choreographer of kinetic experience, providing an initial set of materials and conditions and allowing time itself to sculpt the artwork.

Brook Hsu’s painting Sada depicts Sada Abe, a character in the 1976 film In the Realm of the Senses, a meditation on love known for its explicit, erotic content. The film is based on a real geisha and sex worker who strangulated her lover to death and carried his severed genitals with her in the days following his murder. Sada’s likeness is outlined in pearly, opalescent blues over a dense and otherworldly field of green shellac inks.

Anicka Yi’s illuminated sculptures question the increasingly hazy taxonomical distinctions between what is human, animal, plant and machine. Undulipodia, a prismatic column constructed in hard maple and silicone, evokes the structure and translucence of a Japanese shoji screen. Within a cubic recess hang suspended beakers filled with green resin, their contents resembling algae. And Inhaling A Million Stars, a large wall sculpture, features a UV print of a bacterial culture beneath a maze-like architectural pattern in clear acrylic, its unique aesthetic suggestive of mycelial hyphae as much as an electrical grid.

Sascha Braunig’s painting, Clutches 3, features a composition cinched by the grasp of a clutching, anthropomorphized wire figure, its hoop-like “body” resembling a corset. It captures a dynamic moment in which two dissonant elements merge into a singular form. It is a material translation of an immaterial concept – the power dynamics of societal constructs and the pressure of individuals to conform to larger, hegemonic systems.

Sascha Braunig (b. 1983) lives and works in Portland, Maine. Braunig will have a 2022 solo exhibition at the Oakville Galleries in Oakville, Canada. Past solo exhibitions include Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York and Kunsthall Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway. Selected group exhibitions include those at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, OH, The 2015 New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York, NY, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.
Jules Gimbrone (b. 1982) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Gimbrone has exhibited at such venues as SculptureCenter, Long Island City, NY; the Walker Art Center, Minnesota; MOMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; the University of Florida, Gainesville; Florida; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA; and Théâtre de l’Usine, Geneva, Switzerland.

Piero Golia (b. 1974) lives and works in Los Angeles. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Villa Medici, Rome; Académie de France à Rome, Rome; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas and Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel, Switzerland. Golia has participated in such major group exhibitions as the 2007 Moscow Biennale, Russia; SITE Santa Fe, NM; the 2013 Biennale di Venezia and Made in L.A. 2004, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. He is a co-founder of the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, CA.

Brook Hsu (b. 1987) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Manual Arts, Los Angeles; Et al., San Francisco; Bortolami Gallery, New York; Bahamas Biennale; Deli Gallery, Brooklyn. Select group exhibitions include those at TANK, Shanghai; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; CLEARING, New York; The End of Expressionism, Jan Kaps, Cologne. American Art Catalogues will release a forthcoming monograph and edition. Hsu will open forthcoming solo shows at Edouard Malingue, Hong Kong, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin as well as a group show curated by Chris Sharp at X Museum, Beijing, China.

Anicka Yi (b. 1971) lives and works in New York City. Solo exhibitions include those at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Kitchen, New York; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Group exhibitions include those at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Witte de With Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; the 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; the 12th Biennale de Lyon; Studiolo, Zürich; MoCA, North Miami; Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel; White Flag Projects, Saint Louis; SculptureCenter, New York, and White Columns, New York, amongst others. In 2016, Yi was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize.