Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake

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Installation view, Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Collected Things, Jim Condron’s terrific solo exhibition at Art Cake in Brooklyn prompts us to question our relationship with the objects we interact with—objects that we use, discard, and transform through memory and art process. At the heart of this exhibition are Condron’s recent series of sculptures, which brings together everyday objects and ephemeral materials he has collected from artists, writers, and thinkers who participated in the project—these individuals include personal acquaintances like Graham Nickson, Lucy Sante, Rebecca Hoffberger, Carl E. Hazlewood and Cordy Ryman. Among them is the pioneering painter Grace Hartigan, who was Condron’s teacher and for whom he also worked as a graduate assistant in 2004, four years before her death. This body of work highlights how Condron’s process of collecting, editing, and adding other materials, activates the lineage and history of everyday objects, transforming them into playful art objects with renewed vitality and psychological presence. 

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Habby Osk: No Tricks Involved

Habby Osk, Installing at Undercurrent for the solo exhibition Connectivity, 2020, photo credit Andrew Hendrick

Habby Osk’s work rests upon basic physics—gravity, balance, movement, time and force. These concepts are the concrete medium for her artistic practice which toys with the limits of balance and stability using gravity and force. Through sculpture, photography, and installations, Osk reveals a tension between movement and stillness by placing objects in seemingly unstable positions, capturing a moment of perpetual precarity. These compositions of fragility emphasize the potential for destruction but within an equally mirrored state of balance and stability using a variety of materials such as concrete, wood, aluminum, wax, sugar and jello. Her work references impermanence and the contingency of an action—probing how far objects can go without tipping over, to capture the moment of stillness before a looming collapse or transformation over time.

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