Xaviera Simmons "Wilderness"

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery

poster for Xaviera Simmons "Wilderness"

This event has ended.

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery presents "Wilderness", an exhibition of photographs and installation by Xaviera Simmons.

Observations on natural and urban environments as they relate to social, political, personal and art histories set the stage for Simmons’ photographs. Alluding to traditions of American landscape painting and depictions of the human presence within it, carefully chosen scenery is employed as a hybrid, multivalent character harboring complex immigrant and migrant histories, an agent affecting and affected by the figures that inhabit it. Sages and nomads pose and roam through archetypal locales as conduits for the “nebulous” and “nonlinear” narratives embedded in the ground, allowing entrance into, in the artist’s terms, “other characters, narratives, and geographies.”

Hand-lettered, locally found wooden scraps affixed directly to the gallery wall comprise a sculptural installation of materials chosen for their ubiquitous use in vernacular signage worldwide. Simple painted signposts are re-imagined in a tangled matrix of fragmented, visually compelling text gleaned from notes, conversation, news articles, myth, folklore, poetry and literature, forming a disjointed tableau imbued with collective and personal memory. A lyrical, obscure landscape emerges from the cacophonous accrual of language, leaving accumulated association, conjured atmosphere and the uncanny to form meaning and perception.

Established or potential identities and histories are revealed to be as unstable as they are embedded, questioning notions of idealism and the fallibility of truth and falsehood. Reflecting on the ways photographers collect and own images, and how people define and are marked by their environs, Simmons offers a deluge of details in place of narrative to construct familiar landscapes from disparate parts.

Xaviera Simmons was born in New York, where she currently lives and works. She received a BFA in photography from Bard College in 2004, after spending 2 years of walking pilgrimage retracing the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade with Buddhist Monks. She completed the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art (2005) concurrent with a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio (2006). Major exhibitions and performances include The Bronx Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); MoMA PS1, New York, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The Nasher Museum at Duke University (2010); The Sculpture Center, New York (2009); The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2008). Simmons has won awards and residencies in the US and globally. Her works are in the collections of Deutsche Bank, The High Museum Of Art, The Rubell Family Collection, The Studio Museum In Harlem, The Nasher Museum Of Art At Duke University, and The Agnes Gund Art Collection.

Media

Schedule

from April 14, 2011 to June 04, 2011

Opening Reception on 2011-04-14 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Xaviera Simmons

  • Facebook

    Reviews

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