Co-Curator
Persons in the Presence of a Metamorphosis
Phyllida Barlow, Patty Chang, Anne Chu, Trisha Donnelly, Mona Hatoum, Arturo Herrera, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Miguel Angel Ríos, Rosemarie Trockel, and Jackie Winsor.
Co-curated with Krista Alba, Jenni Crain, and Liv Cuniberti.
12.05.2019 - 12.15, 2019
CCS Bard Galleries
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Persons in the Presence of a Metamorphosis is an exhibition of sculpture, textile, and video-based works that engage with processes of transformation in form, nature, or appearance. Bringing together ten artists in the Marieluise Hessel Collection, the exhibition encompasses a diverse range of artistic approaches that use formal and conceptual incongruities to unsettle expectations. Eliciting both the satisfactions and discomforts that arise from change, the exhibition addresses the transformative possibilities of personal regeneration, the animism of materials, and disruption of cyclical time.
The exhibition takes its title from a poem by poet and critic John Yau. Yau weaves fragments of text and the repetition of words into stanzas, disorienting the reader’s relationship to meaning while also offering a freedom of interpretation through non-linear composition. The artists in this exhibition experiment with similar strategies of destabilization, including the unusual use of familiar materials, or creating subtle slippages in space and time. Through doubling, pairing, or by joining disparate elements in unexpected combinations, the artworks support multiple associations.
Persons in the Presence of a Metamorphosis positions transformation as a generative force that perpetually broadens the scope of experience. Collectively, the artworks on view provide opportunities to contemplate the fluidity of forms, and the boundaries that purport to contain them. The exhibition embraces dynamic perspectives that are receptive to change, difference, and possibility.
This exhibition was one of four curated projects from the Marieluise Hessel Collection. More details of the project can be found in the exhibition booklet that was published to coincide with the opening of the exhibitions.