Please join us for a live performance by Dan Lippel and Douglas Boyce, accompanying Frank WANG Yefeng’s Avatopology exhibition on October 18, at 7pm in the NARS Project Space.

Join us for a unique live performance by guitarist Dan Lippel of La Comète (Partita No. 3 for solo guitar), a work composed by Douglas Boyce. Inspired by Jacques Gallot, a lesser-known 17th century French lutenist and composer, the piece resonates with the themes of Frank WANG Yefeng’s Avatopology, which explores nomadism and global creative collaboration. Boyce’s composition transforms Baroque traditions, engaging with a particular historical moment and aesthetic context. The performance brings an additional auditory layer to Avatopology’s immersive multimedia installation, merging live and recorded sound to explore the connections between past and present and cultural and creative flux.

Avatopology, a solo exhibition featuring work by Frank WANG Yefeng, explores a dialectic of control and submission among participants as they navigate the tricky terrain of creative collaboration. The work on view is the result of commissioned contributions by freelance creators around the world. It reflects the developing interpersonal relationships with the artist and the constraints on creative freedom as they each negotiate expectations, artistic identity, and the end result.

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Daniel Lippel is an acclaimed guitarist known for his versatility in solo, chamber, and contemporary music performances. Described as an "exciting soloist" by the New York Times and "precise and sensitive" by the Boston Globe, Lippel has premiered over fifty new works and recorded many on New Focus Recordings, the label he co-founded. His performances span prestigious venues and festivals worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and international events in Europe, Asia, and South America. Lippel is a member of several ensembles, including the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and counter)induction, and has collaborated with renowned composers such as Mario Davidovsky and John Zorn.

Douglas Boyce writes chamber music that draws on Medieval and Renaissance traditions and modernist aesthetics, building rich rhythmic structures that shift between order, fragmentation, elegance, and ferocity.  Many of his works have a direct historical touchstone. Other works draw on sources from antiquity, Literature and philosophy are also significant points of articulation. He holds a BA in music and Physics from Williams College (1992), an MM in composition from the University of Oregon (1996), and a PhD in Composition from the University of Pennsylvania (2000). .

Frank WANG Yefeng (b. Shanghai) is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and digital nomad situated in-between New York City and Shanghai. Initially trained as a sculptor, Yefeng’s practice spans a wide range of media, including video installation, experimental 3D animation, painting, drawing, and writing. His art explores the experience of "in-betweenness" that arises from a nomadic transnational existence. Interweaving physical and digital realms, his projects critically examine fixed identity formations, the genealogies of racialized others, and the alienation of people and objects in dominant cultural and technological narratives.

Yefeng earned his MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. His projects have been featured in exhibitions internationally, including the BRIC Biennial (NY, US), the OCAT Biennial (SZ, CN), the WRONG Biennale (US), City Project of the 14th Shanghai Biennale (SH, CN), Art Basel Hong Kong (HK, CN), The Armory Show (NY, US), CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (NY, US), Smack Mellon (NY, US), Times Square (NY, USA), Denver Theater District (CO, US), Gasworks London (LDN, UK), Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art (Jeju, KR), Pylon Lab (DRS, DE), Tai Kwun Contemporary (HK, CN), Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing (BJ, CN), Shanghai K11 Museum (SH, CN), etc. Yefeng has also been awarded solo exhibitions, residencies, and fellowships at K11 Art Foundation x ArtReview (WH, CN), International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) (NY, US), New York Art Residency & Studios (NARS) Foundation (NY, US), Pratt Institute (NY, US), Asia Art Archive in America (NY, US), MacDowell (NH, US), and Vermont Studio Center (VT, US), among others.

Please join us for an artist talk & closing reception with Jason File in conversation with Eriola Pira Isak Berbic on June 18, at 6pm in the NARS Project Space.

Jason File will discuss his exhibition Persistent Illusions in conversation with Eriola Pira and Isak Berbic.

Persistent Illusions examines the conditions giving rise to mass atrocities through the lens of a Hague war crimes trial and the moving image evidence used as proof in court. Juxtaposing real trial footage of the artist cross-examining a politician with the VHS tapes played in court, this two-channel video installation invites the audience to sit as a jury—perhaps to determine what we can know from video as a medium itself. 

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Jason File (1976, USA) is an artist, practicing lawyer and former United Nations war crimes prosecutor whose art practice uses legal materials and contexts to explore the poetics of systems of justice, property and power.  His work has been shown at institutions including the Whitechapel Gallery (London); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); the Historical Museum of Bosnia & Herzegovina (Sarajevo); and Stroom (The Hague).  A graduate of the Chelsea College of Art and Design (London), the Royal Academy of Art (Netherlands), and Yale Law School, Jason is a studio member at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York.

Eriola Pira is a researcher and curator. She is the Curator and Director of Programs at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, where she organizes and co-curates across the Center’s programs and initiatives. In this capacity, she works closely with artists to explore, commission, and present new ideas and work on art and its politics, including exhibitions, performances, and publications. She’s conceived and organized residency and fellowship programs, conferences, publications, and solo and group exhibitions at Art in General, NARS Foundation, and The Foundation for Culture and Society, where she held previous positions. She’s contributed to and collaborated with institutions worldwide on exhibitions, publications, symposia, commissions, and special projects. Her work has been published and featured in catalogs and publications such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, and Artforum. She has served as an editor at Guernica and guest editor for Kosovo 2.0 magazines. A native of Albania, Pira has an MA in Visual Culture Theory from New York University.

Isak Berbic is an artist and Associate Professor of Art at Stony Brook University, and NARS alumni.

Please join us for an artist talk, publication launch & closing reception with Marina Kassianidou in conversation with Mary Annunziata on May 15, at 6pm in the NARS Project Space.

Marina Kassianidou will discuss her exhibition A Partial History in conversation with Mary Annunziata, and a publication corresponding to the exhibition will also be available.

A Partial History unfolds histories/stories of touch, movement, language, and translation. The artist recreates books from her late grandmother’s library, focusing on marks of use and time on the books’ pages. She then makes drawings that magnify and superimpose the marks from the books, compressing time while potentially expanding space. The recreated books and drawings become alternative history books and maps, recording shared histories and spaces of handling and holding.

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Marina Kassianidou was born in Limassol, Cyprus, and lives and works between Limassol and Boulder, Colorado, USA. She received a B.A. in Studio Art from Stanford University, an M.A. in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and a Ph.D. in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK. Her work has been exhibited internationally at spaces such as the House of Cyprus (Athens, Greece), NiMAC (Nicosia, Cyprus), Thkio Ppalies (Nicosia, Cyprus), Tenderpixel Gallery (London, UK), Stand4 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Yes Ma’am Projects (Denver, CO), Lane Meyer Projects (Denver, CO), and Rule Gallery (Marfa, TX). She has been awarded residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, Hambidge Center, Ox-Bow, and The Studios at MASS MoCA, among others. She is a recipient of the 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.

Mary Annunziata is an interdisciplinary writer who focuses on art’s intersections with conflict, migration, diasporic identity, and emerging technologies. She holds an MA in Critical & Curatorial Studies from Columbia University and has worked for arts and nonprofit institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, the Artist Protection Fund, and Access Now. Mary is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Please join us for an artist talk and closing reception with Yi Hsuan Lai in conversation with Elise Thompson on March 20, at 6:30pm in the NARS Project Space.

Yi Hsuan Lai will discuss her exhibition Gut Feeling in conversation with Elise Thompson.

Gut Feeling explores the interplay between body and objects, physical and psychological landscapes through photography and photographic collages. Yi Hsuan uses discarded materials and her body to create assemblages for two-and three-dimensional photographs. The work's visceral and ephemeral quality mirrors the body's fluidity, complexities of self-identity, and Otherness. Materiality sparks a dialogue between tangible sensibility and tactile ambiguity in a space. Her work traverses construction and deconstruction, animate and inanimate, revaluing one-time-use materials into bodily and otherworldly representations. Yi Hsuan Lai is a NARS Alumni from 2020.

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Yi Hsuan Lai received an MFA in photography from School of Visual Arts in New York City (2020) and in 2023 she received support from NYFA’s immigrant artist program. She also received residency fellowships from Light Work in 2024 and Vermont Studio Center in 2023. Her work was among LensCulture’s Critics’ Top 10 in 2022. Her solo exhibition, Anonymous Town, appeared in SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York City, 2020). Group exhibitions include Portraits Beyond Faces at the FLOOR Gallery (Korea, 2023), Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow at the PH Museum Photo Festival (Bologna, 2022), Photo London (UK, 2023), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now at Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY, 2021), and Smart Objects, Flattened Images at Well Well Project (Portland, OR, 2022).

Elise Thompson (b. 1988, Cincinnati, OH) received an MFA at Florida State University in 2016. Residencies include Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Artist Residency, The Maple Terrace Artist Residency Program, and ChaNorth Artist Residency. She’s been published in New American Paintings South #124, Friend of the Artist vol. 8, VAST Magazine vol. 1, Maake Magazine 14, and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Recent exhibitions include The Spartanburg Art Museum (SC), The Wassaic Project (NY), Paradice Palase (NYC), Laundromat Art Space (FL), Westobou Gallery (GA), Soft Times Gallery (CA), Florida Mining Gallery (FL), SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Ceysson & Bénétière (NYC), and The Delaware Contemporary (DE). She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.