'Fluff War' and 'Wildlife' are on view through June 15, 2019 at Anton Kern Gallery. All images courtesy the gallery. Lead image: 'Untitled (Exhibition of Dust)' David Shrigley.
May drew inspiration from the Japanese art of Ikebana, where each piece plays with placement and arrangement. The backdrops and environments are kept neutral, without any colors and forms, and are placed within the context of a manmade object. The objects' placement becomes the art, and viewers get an entirely new perspective on the harmony between the natural and the manmade.
But, how did this collaboration between SIZED and Dries Van Noten come to be? Curator and creative director Alexander May shares that collaboration is the core of every project and exhibition that SIZED puts forward. He says, “Of course, I was excited when Dries Van Noten reached out because I have been a fan of theirs for years. I have always been drawn towards their eclectic use of color, shape, and material, and with each Dries Van Noten location being so uniquely curated, it felt like the perfect match for SIZED to curate an exhibition.”
May's curatorial process is grounded in intuition, trusting what attracts him and letting himself get pulled towards what he feels most creatively energizes him. He loves a lively mixture of textures, from gloss to matte and grain. With an exhibition like this, the viewers are pulled into the world of physicality and get to see what happens when natural and artificial objects are together.
As for the conversation around which artists to include, May explains that he was most attracted to the areas in which objects connect to each other through placement, arrangement, material, and history. The exhibition brings together everything that SIZED stands for — form, texture, color, overall environment, and diversity. BOND showcases hyper-local as well as global curation with local artists, and international works brought together just for the exhibition.
View selections from the exhibition below.
With a keen eye, Parfet delves into the contradicting sentiments of womanhood, painting a vivid picture of the harsh reality of oppressive systems that make motherhood almost as difficult as milking a duck. Through her stunning book, Parfet empowers women everywhere to embrace their unique experiences and take pride in the complexity of the life-giving power of women.
The book is now available for sale online and in select bookstores including: Arcana Books on the Arts, Casa Bosques, Claire de Rouen, Mast Books, Librarie Yvon Lambert, McNally Jackson and Skylight Books.
Dominguez is interested in the way cosmetic repairs tell a story about how people cope with a damaged object —from the precious to the resourceful. “I found it interesting that some people were very meticulous about the way they taped their tail lights, matching the color, trying to make it nearly invisible, while others took a more desperate angle and just used whatever they had and taped it up at whatever angle just to keep the parts held together,” he says.
“[It’s trying] to solve a utilitarian problem as well as an aesthetic one, and then in a sense performing this action by driving the car. This act of performance, considering the car as an extension of the self and being public facing, reflected an unconscious deep-rooted artistic sensibility in a way that something more immediate like fashion did not. I wanted to explore this idea further – [the] reflection of a person.”
Mixtape features 16 works, each piece celebrating the equalizing force of ‘drive’ and the individual’s relationship with the material world. The shattered headlights nursed by duct tape become semiotic displays subsisting at the intersection of damage and repair. The works engage with the viewer by finding common ground in these utilitarian objects that are often overlooked or discarded. For Dominguez, these ‘tape jobs’ not only represent attempts to rectify the past (perhaps by an accident or crash) but they collide with an understanding of utilitarian resourcefulness. The outcome? His works turn the utilitarian ‘repair’ into the aesthetic and artistic.
By taking mundane, often overlooked objects, and reframing them in an artistic context, Dominguez challenges the assumptions we may have about art and conservation. He seeks to find an entry point into the work that is wide and almost non-conceptual, allowing the viewer to see deeper layers of the piece. “I’m still interested in going deeper with the work, what it brings up for me, but I think growing up feeling sort of alienated from ‘Art’, I have a tendency to create something for which that alienated person may feel,” he says. Dominguez’s practice galvanizes us to find joy in the quotidian and offers new definitions of what resonance can look and feel like.
Drew Dominguez is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York City. He works with a range of mediums from photography to sculpture, to assemblage, and through his work, encourages us to confront the interiority of our own worlds, inviting introspection into what is deemed to be spectacle. Drew’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in New York City, and he also runs the independent imprint Good English Publications which publishes small runs of artist books and zines. Drew will be pursuing an MFA in New Genres at Hunter College this fall.
