HIGHLIGHTS
Mementos abound all around us in our day-to-day activities. Often, they hold dear memories: some we wish to keep, and some we wish to release so that we can move on to new experiences. Be it a trinket that houses memories of better days, a gift from someone we cherish, or a serendipitous discovery that found its way into our orbit, we become fused in inexplicable ways. What happens then, when we are asked or forced to part with such gifts? It can be freeing to release ourselves from materialism, but it can also be devastating, depending on the circumstances.
Remarkably honest and, at times, vulnerable, each exhibition seamlessly traces the origins of belonging and existence. As demonstrations of bonding between human and animal, or human and the inanimate present themselves through human activity, we serve as witnesses to the unpredictability of life and are asked to unlearn trained behaviors instilled in us from birth. As many of us find ourselves forced to relinquish control as we grapple with the realities of the world, we turn to what most gives us comfort. Alexandra Borovski and Jordan Casteel explore the capacities of human emotion through fluid gestures of connectivity. At Stephen Street Gallery, Borovski’s focus on the art of found objecthood is a channel that encourages active participation and engagement. Casteel’s show at Hill Art Foundation presents a seamless blending of both: tenderly rendered portraits align the gallery walls, inviting viewers to sit and stare as space is made in the light of day and in full dialogue with the cityscape mere feet away on the other side of the windowed veneer that separates the intimate realm from the much more public one. Delicate applications are the power cords of these orchestral experiences. Plucking strings of sorrow and joy, those twangy moments are interjected with moments of soft inquisitiveness that pulse from one moment to the next.
Jordan Casteel: Field of View at Hill Art Foundation @hillartfoundation
On view through: November 23, 2024
Curated by: Lauren Haynes, Head Curator at Governors Island Arts and Vice President for Arts and Culture at the Trust for Governors Island in New York City
Jordan Casteel’s exhibition, Field of View, at Hill Art Foundation spans the past decade of the artist’s career through twenty-five poignant paintings that lusciously meld exuberant color choices with intimate moments of honest humanity. Through tenderly framed portraits that are both intimate and public, the vibrations they emit radiate heightened frequencies that reverberate outward onto the glossy Chelsea cityscape and burrow deeper still into one’s own memories of riding the train, looking back at one’s reflection in a storefront window, or at home amidst familiar possessions and within the confines of inner dialogue. Additional comfort is offered in the form of upholstered, overstuffed seats for viewers to linger and connect on slower waves and deeper levels. The melding of the printed fabric of the seats effectively mirrors the botanical paintings that Casteel so masterfully crafts. Within the walls of Hill Art Foundation’s space, various intersections of Casteel’s practice converge tangentially, a perceptive mirror to the world just beyond the glass panes that illuminate the treasures held within it. As these cross-sections of life bifurcate through organic and structural modes, these circuits of knowledge place viewers within linear complexities that stimulate one’s own experiences of how interconnected and blurred the lines of art and life truly are.
Alexandra Borovski: Object Library at Stephen Street Gallery @stephenstreetgallery
On view through: November 3, 2024
In the Object Library at Stephen Street Gallery, Alexandra Borovski presents an installation: a gorgeous, buttery yellow that draws you in with wonderment. Organic in content and presentation, I couldn’t help but contemplate its resemblance to a honeycomb, imagining it buzzing with activity and offering rich sustenance to its partakers. If all who are drawn into it are worker bees, the delicious experience of physical connection to it is reward enough. Its first iteration took place as a street intervention in Bushwick at the intersection of Evergreen and Forest; perfectly in keeping with the hybridity of natural and manmade references. Here, Alexandra reckons with facing one’s own sincerity as she navigates this project and seeks to dissolve the societal force of asking for and receiving permission. This give/take nature is carved with love, and its intention is to bestow new ways of thinking about how we engage with the world we’ve inherited through moments of suspension and permeability.
The consideration of relational aesthetics is cleverly integrated through a gumball machine artwork, Sage Advice (in which the gallery and artist provide coinage in the amount of seventy-five cents per use to activate). Before approaching the machine (a collaboration with artist Andrew Moeller of Short Stop Gallery, as well as Borovski’s students at The Edie Windsor SAGE Center), the visitor is asked to think of a question to ask, similar to a magic 8ball to conceptualize their relationship to chance and the unknown. This advice is given by Borovski’s class, and it all bears repeating. Borovski’s experience as a young emigre brings additional layers of tenacity and meaning to the significance of objecthood. To leave it all behind in order to adapt to life’s unexpected turns is to accept that object permanence is as fleeting as life itself. In an era where hoarding of resources has become commonplace, this project serves as a cleansing reminder that what matters is carried with us, irrespective of physicality.
As we are but meandering beings in a vast expanse of the universe, the installation also includes astronomy catalogs deconstructed from Astronomy Magazine one year before the artist was born, before, as she describes, the artist “was materialized as a permeable likeness.” This reference led me to think of space junk and how much of our waste overwhelms this planet and perhaps others in the future. As our trinkets and doodads continue to take up precious real estate, the artist seeks to slow this down by redistributing what is already in existence at will. We are welcome to contribute items, take items, and move items in an ever-evolving examination and space of play. Borovski’s Object Library is much more than an exercise in assemblage art; it swells beyond parameters into spatial dimensions, both human and cosmic. Through participatory and archival approaches, this open forum for the simple pleasures of giving and taking is multiplied continuously, making for a highly sensorial, memorable, and heartwarming experience.
About the writer: Yasmeen Abdallah is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and educator examining history, contemporary culture, materiality, reuse, memory, and space. She has been a visiting and teaching artist at institutions including New Museum; Pratt Institute; Sarah Lawrence College; Residency Unlimited; BRIC; Kean University; Parsons; Columbia University; Children’s Museum of NYC; El Barrio Artspace; Fairleigh Dickinson; and University of Massachusetts. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology (focus in Historical Archaeology) and in Studio Art with honors, with a Minor in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies from University of Massachusetts; and received an MFA in Fine Arts, with distinction, from Pratt Institute. Exhibitions include Art in Odd Places; the Boiler; Bronx Art Space; Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center; Cornell University; Ed Varie; Elizabeth Foundation; Nars Foundation; Open Source; Pratt Institute; PS122 Gallery; Spring Break Art Show ; University of Massachusetts; and Westbeth. Publications include Anthropology of Consciousness; Ante Art; Art Observed; Bust Magazine; Emergency Index; Hyperallergic; Papergirl Brooklyn; Free City Radio; Radio Alhara; Tussle Magazine; the Urban Activist; and Transborder Art. Her work is in public, private, and traveling collections in the U.S. and abroad. @86cherrycherry