September, 2022
NARS Foundation is proud to present Traces, a series of diverse works investigating our everyday lives and its invisible traces put in context to the greater complex of nature and being. Through sculpture, painting, installation and text the nine artists explore topics such as labor, memory, grief and displacement. Traces explores the both visible and invisible patterns that construct our everyday lives. Cause and effect is explored both as a reflection and power play within commercial and everyday life observations but also as a thought of the second chance for life, wherever that may be found. Standardizations as measuring tools for beauty and juxtapositions within nature and our temporal experience of the body is investigated alongside an acceptance of otherness, decay, solitude and discomfort that overlap in this exploration of a fragmented union.
Opening Reception, 2 September, 5:00-8:00pm
NARS Foundation
201 46th Street, 4th fl.
Brooklyn, NY 11220
Check it out HERE for more details.
The works in this exhibition have been made, while considering each other's pieces. In Rotem Reshef’s paper formations, a second chance of life is reflected through pulsating light, breathing for the paper pieces and is installed in juxtaposition to Nicki Cherry’s decaying body shape oozing the scent of decomposing flowers. Jacq Grove’s constructions are embracing Kate Wallace’s still life subject matter that function as little breaths of air in their interior solitude. From a distance the mirror portals of Grove’s rough cast cinder block formations, acting as a metaphor for our own internal cellular architecture, send us into Wallace’s subtle world of wait within transit.
All artists are addressing human behavior through the lack of human presence. The mirror follows the room and broadens our horizon within the space but then narrows in on us in Daniel Shieh’s work, where we are forced to not see ourselves but to look at each other. As a small commentary gesture between us as viewers, and the artists taking our glances hostage for a second, forcing us to deal directly with each other. This feeling of an otherness is also present in Diyar Mayil’s work, contemplating displacement and the power dynamic of being a guest, investigated through domestic objects such as a broom of glass suggesting the fragility we all face in our everyday lives.
The things we might want to sweep under the carpet are present in Nicole Ji Soo Kim’s instructional drawings, contemplating life as grids while dealing with the unpredictability that hides within those lines. The drawings work as almost performative pieces where the act of making them becomes a tool to deal with grief and the fear of losing the memories of loved ones becomes liberated within the narrative of instruction.
The standardization of measure becomes the cornerstone in Huidi Xiang’s piece suggesting the body in a metric system, which argues whether we have become stuck in pure mathematical definitions of who we are as people. Here socio-political standardization is exposed within the objects being a measuring tool. A human objectified through standardization is also a theme addressed in Kumi Kaguraoka’s metamorphoses of the beautiful. Here, the body is looked at as a redesigned form, capable of change but within what parameters? The essence of all the pieces in conjunction suggest a need for relooking into the definitions of who we are and how we go about being human beings. What traces do we leave behind, that tell something about who we all are?
Featuring works by the Season III International Residency Artists:
Nicki Cherry (@nicki__cherry)
Jacq Groves (@jacqgroves)
Kumi Kaguraoka (@kumi_kaguraoka)
Nicole Ji Soo Kim (@ni___jisu)
Diyar Mayil (@diyarmayil)
Rotem Reshef (@rotem__reshef)
Daniel Shieh (@danielshieh)
Kate Wallace (@kate_ewallace)
Huidi Xiang (@huidixiang)
This exhibition is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Israel Office of Cultural Affairs.
Artwork on invitation: Rotem Reshef, 'Cascades', 2022
