Isaac Pool “40 Volume”
Knockdown Center
This event has ended.
Knockdown Center presents 40 Volume, Isaac Pool’s first solo exhibition in New York, an installation and sitcom-length play starring three sock-encrusted vases and a head of fennel. In 40 Volume‘s performances, the vessels depart from their place in the adjacent gallery and chat together through filters of personal mythology and melodramatic pop lyrics to find sisterhood.
The exhibition includes paintings and sculptures: each character from the play holds a space marked by surfaces of dollar store glitz and janky, poetic objects. The paintings are assemblages of sculptural elements, a mass of accumulated and arranged material that is anchored to the wall; whereas the sculptures, with their humorous constructions, are suggestions for pertinent lifestyle choices. As a study in aspirational whiteness and its discontents, 40 Volume matches its protagonists’ delusions with a tenderness as charming as it is suspect.
Two performances of the play will accompany the opening and closing of the exhibition on January 13 and February 24 with receptions to follow.
40 Volume’s play is performed by Alisa Besher, Zachary Delamater, Scears Lee, Martha Moszczynski, Alejandra Venancio, and Isaac Pool. A version of 40 Volume was originally published in Volume 3 of Haunt Journal (2016). Isaac Pool: 40 Volume was organized by Samuel Draxler.
Isaac Pool is an artist who makes performances, photographs, sculptures, videos, and texts. Pool images sites of embodiment and provisional glamours; he has held positions as a character actress, pet empath, and object choreographer. As a teenager, Isaac performed in Detroit nightclubs using video projections, trash costuming, and cheap audio software under the name RENTAL. Beginning in 2008, Pool performed as feminist anti-hero and celebutante Sally Johnson and retired the character with the 2013 film A Alternatives, featuring a wardrobe by BCALLA and soundtrack by Samuel Consiglio and Colin Self. Recent performances include The Knockdown Center, Judson Memorial Church, and La MaMa (all NYC). Recent exhibitions include La MaMa Galleria, NYC; Green Gallery, Yale, CT; and Mindscape Universe, Berlin. His first full length book of poems in print, Light Stain, is available from What Pipeline, Detroit. Alien She, an ebook dedicated to Mark Aguhar, is available from Klaus eBooks. Pool holds an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons the New School for Design (2013) and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Electronic Art from Wayne State University (2010).
Opening Performance and Reception: Saturday, January 13, 7:00pm
Closing Performance and Reception: Saturday, February 24, 7:00pm
Media
Schedule
from January 13, 2018 to February 25, 2018