Image courtesy of the artist.
Please join us for an artist talk with Kate Stone, in conversation with Jon Duff and Robert Hickerson, as part of NARS Entree Encore Alumni series.
November 29th, 7-8pm
in the NARS Project Space.
NARS Alumni Kate Stone will discuss her solo exhibition Soft Tectonics, and the role of horror and the grotesque in art with Jon Duff and Robert Hickerson.
Soft Tectonics is an architectural installation that blurs the boundary between domestic space and the body. Using found furniture, carpet remnants, wool, hair, teeth and other materials, Kate Stone imagines a home that absorbs so much of the residue of life that it is animated into a growing, living thing - a supernatural force that serves as a stand-in for the tension and uncertainty that world events bring to our personal lives and private spaces.
Kate Stone is a Brooklyn-based artist working in sculpture and animation to explore the domestic uncanny and the ways that natural and mythological forces shape our environment. Kate received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Parsons the New School for Design. She has been awarded grants from The Tierney Fellowship, The Lotos Foundation, FST StudioProjects and Kone Foundation. She has attended residencies at NARS Foundation, Artists Alliance LES Studio Program, Kone Foundation, MASS MoCA and Mudhouse Residency in rural Greece. Her work has been exhibited at 601Artspace, bitforms, Cuchifritos Gallery, Dinner Gallery, FiveMyles, Ortega y Gasset Projects, RubberFactory, Spring Break Art Show, South Bend Museum of Art, The Museum of Broken Relationships and Transmitter Gallery, among others.
Jon Duff (b. 1986, Oconomowoc, WI) lives and works in Accord, NY. He received his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2012, and his BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2008. He is a 2011 alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and he attended the Triangle Artists’ Workshop in 2012. After graduating from MICA, Duff was a finalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Award in 2012. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, ArtMaze, Ambit and JOIA Magazine. Duff is currently employed as the Exhibitions and Art Collection Curator at Adelphi University in New York while he also pursues independent curatorial projects. Duff’s artwork combines science fiction and comedy in busy scenes that reflect our present condition of both overabundance and disorder. His work pokes fun at the human experience while offering an uncommon glimpse into the personal and psychological strains beneath the morass of the modern day-to-day. Duff is currently on a one-year hiatus from making artwork while he renovates the farm he recently bought with his wife, builds a new studio building and starts his new carpentry company, Black Dog Woodworks.
Robert Hickerson (b. New Haven, Connecticut) is a Brooklyn based artist working in photography, video, performance, and installation. Hickerson’s work uses the iconography of horror films to explore and play with the notion of the monstrous queer. Through working with his family, and together working across mediums, he orchestrates narratives that expand upon contemporary concerns surrounding queer identity, and the impact of culture on the self. Hickerson’s solo projects include Target Audience (Brooklyn Fire Proof, Brooklyn, NY), Spreading Lights (Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA), The Mother of Sighs (Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY), Backyard Stud (Synesthesia Gallery, Brooklyn), and JOAN (AMO Studios, New York, NY). His work has also been included in various group shows including From Another Source (Study Hall Gallery, Utica, NY), Lavender Scare curated by Dan Halm (Spring/Break Art Show, New York, NY), the horror (SEIS Gallery, Los Angeles, CA), On Death curated by Jon Feinstein (Humble Arts Foundation, online), When Darkness Loves Us curated by Kelsey and Rémy Bennett (Spring/Break Art Show, New York City, NY). Hickerson’s work has been published in TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, Musée Magazine, VICE Magazine, Refinery29, Pix, and Game Boy Magazine. He has also created album artwork for several bands including, Mr. HE, Plague Vendor, Fever Joy, and guccihighwaters, as well as music videos for Sun Abduction and Plague Vendor. He is five foot, ten inches, and an aquarius, rising leo, moon gemini.