2016 Season II Residency Exhibition
Converging Paths, Objects, and Selves
Curator: Eriola Pira
May 13 – June 10, 2016
May 13 – June 10, 2016
The New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation is pleased to present, Converging Paths, Objects and Selves, an exhibition featuring selections from the work of 2016 Season II International Artist Residency Participants: Hua Bai, Gunilla Daga, Cecilia Enberg, Cecilia Jansson, Jenny Laiwint, Bundith Phunsombatlert, Julie Trudel and Alisha Wessler. The assembled works, a number produced at NARS, represent the divergent and distinct artistic approaches that have together formed a community, over the course of three to six months in South Brooklyn.
A confluence of material, process and subject matter characterizes the approach and of the artists in this exhibition. Hua Bai’s current work in photography and video has been preoccupied with the viral qualities of certain architectural forms that are transforming Chinese cities and obliterating local style and history from one global city to the next. If Gunilla Daga’s previous work was informed by the color qualities of her surroundings, the series of works she started in residence at NARS were determined by the atmospheric conditions in the studio, as revealed by the scale and intimate gesture. Cecilia Enberg’s drawings and photographs trace her wanderings and exploration of her immediate surroundings and community in Sunset Park. The paths taken and people met commingle with her observations to produce a personal and documentary account. Splitting her time between her studio in Sunset Park and at a ceramics workshop, Cecilia Jansson has returned to her beginnings—ceramics—pairing it with bread to generate novel forms, textures and colors. An obscure self-help book, how-to therapy sessions, and a belief in their transformative power underpins Jennifer Laiwint’s video work and her study of the self in formation. Bundith Phunsombatlert’s interest in the convergence of media, places, and ways of being and seeing, orient viewer towards imaginative directions. Experiments in abstract painting, as limited by self-imposed processes and constraints, have led Julie Trudel to striking perceptual and sculptural effects. Alisha Wessler’s objects, emanating from alchemy-like approaches to material and affect, reside in an indeterminate realm between the natural and artificial.
