CURATORIAL PRACTICE: CURATOR AND PRODUCER
Form and Formless: Constellations of Knowledge
Paper Buck, Forest as Kiln, 2023 , Paraffin wax, slag, ore, limestone brick, embedded charcoal, 8.19.2023, Furnace Brook, Housatonic River Valley, Schaghticoke Territory, Cornwall Bridge, CT, 30” x 10” x 10”
Exhibition
UrbanGlass
October 18 - February 23, 2024
The diverse works from eighteen artists are installed throughout the gallery to eschew singular storytelling and instantiate multiple narratives. Taking as its point of departure the fact that glass as a material fluctuates between solid and liquid, Form and Formless meditates on the slipperiness rather than the fixity of categories of identity, such as gender, sexuality, and race, among others. The show presents artworks featuring glass, textiles, watercolors, paintings, projections, audio experience, and beyond, covering every surface of the Robert Lehman Gallery. The works are meant to cohere into constellations of knowledge metaphorically and then unravel and connect with other works to create different meanings, only for the process to begin again. Artists’ works are “constellated” into eleven overlapping groupings: rhizomatic thinking; expanded affinity; porous archive; fugitivity and effulgence of color; (super)natural, magic, and spirituality; liquidity; post-pornography; becoming/borderless; right to opacity; sexuality, ecology, and land; and chiasmus/interviewing. In this way, the curatorial framework embodies the major theme of the entire year: "Forever Becoming". The exhibition includes works by Tsohil Bhatia, Paper Buck, Max Colby, Amy Cousins, Deborah Czeresko, Genevieve De Leon, Carmel Dor, Meg Dyer, Angel Favorite, Chitra Ganesh, Julia Kwon, Jessi Li, Ren Mahon, Abbey Muza, Wojciech Puś, Andrea Ray, Katie Shulman, and Shahzia Sikander.
"Form and Formless" is part of the "Forever Becoming" trilogy of shows at UrbanGlass (2023).
–Alpesh Kantilal Patel
