Boundless
Boundless
April 23rd - May 20th, 2023
Opening Reception
Sunday, April 23rd from 4-6pm.
Curated by Christina Massey, KUNSTRAUM Curator-in-Residence 2023-24
Artists: Carlos de la Sancha, Jacquelyn Strycker, Nadya Volicer, Olivia Springberg, Zhenyuan Shi
The Boundless exhibition at KUNSTRAUM LLC in Brooklyn, NY features the work of five contemporary artists: Carlos de la Sancha, Jacquelyn Strycker, Nadya Volicer, Olivia Springberg and Zhenyuan Shi. Through experimental adaptations of mediums ranging from photography, fiber arts, painting to printmaking, these artists explore the physical and emotional aspects of boundaries and limitations. While art is often seen as a boundaryless and free endeavor, personal boundaries may be limited by social constraints due to culture, religion, environment, or physical ability and space.
Carlos de la Sancha breaks with the traditional landscape and artistic representation of photography by using the material as a refraction point to activate space and change the viewer's perspective. He unrolls the paper from the walls to the floor in a sculptural work, where it acts as a transition line from pink to bright yellow with a deep red horizon before turning yellow again. Rejecting photography as an image making tool, de la Sancha thinks of the medium as a series of events. Due to the artist’s own color blindness, the conversation of “correct” color description is opened and allows for a fluid interpretation.
Jacquelyn Stryker responds to physical, emotional, and mental limitations in managing the balance between home and work in contemporary life. In her abstract quilt-like works, Stryker explores the pleasures of color, pattern, and craft, but also reflects the disjointed nature of the current cultural situation with patterns that fall in and out of repetition. Household objects such as cookie cutters, wallpaper, and potholders serve as source material that is mixed with the mechanical process of the risograph – a further comment on the presence of alienation. Risographs are used to translate handmade processes such as sewing, quilting, and embroidery, erasing the distinctions between hand and machine, and between personal and professional space and time.
Zhenyuan Shi’s narrative risographs began as poems translating words into images that express their experience of censorship and oppression as a queer immigrant of color from Shanghai, China. Symbols and images are used as a secretive method of communication that transition across the picture plane. For example, the butterfly symbolizes rebirth and the delicate nature of hope, reflecting Shi’s experience of immigrating, and the conflict and a crisis of identity that follows when the promise and reality of experience are unaligned. By breaking through the limits of language through symbolism, the works go beyond the limits of language reminding us of the power of an image.
If we consider our memories as another kind of barrier, in the fabric works of Nadya Volicer we see moments of a couple posing for a photograph, overlaid with sewn lines that change and confuse their positions within the artwork. As in a memory, some moments of the images are clearer than others, others blurred and superimposed until the sensation represents the idea or feeling of a memory rather than the distinction of a memory itself. Volicer uses old family photographs as source material, drawing on those where her own memory has faded and she has little or no recollection of the documented event. Exploring these moments, she examines the uncertainty of memory and the limitless ways in which we can attempt to understand the passage of time.
In Olivia Springberg's dreamlike paintings, abstract figures are blurred and out of focus, permeating her multi-layered visual language as appearance rather than presence. Exploring the difference between memory and reality, selected emotional moments are given weight though sometimes they have only occurred in dreams, commenting on their influence and power. The paintings entail sculptural framing with organic edges that transcend the work beyond the picture plane into objecthood, encouraging an exploration of the boundaries between fictional space and reality.
Artists Carlos de la Sancha, Jacquelyn Strycker, Nadya Volicer, Olivia Springberg, and Zhenyuan Shi have found methods to acknowledge, explore, and challenge the perceived and felt boundaries around them through their art. Their works invite us to explore our own boundaries, to see them in new perspectives, and to explore methods to break through our own limitations, giving weight to the imaginary as a catapult for life and futures.
Artworks in Boundless were selected from KUNSTRAUM’s annual open call by the KUNSTRAUM team and curated by the 2023-24 Curator-in-Residence, Christina Massey.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Opening Reception: April 23rd, 4-6pm
Closing Reception: May 20th, 4-6pm
LOCATIONS & HOURS
KUNSTRAUM LLC, 20 Grand Avenue, Loft 509, Brooklyn, NY 11205
Thursdays - Saturdays, 12-6pm by appointment only— Please email Christina Massey to make an appointment.
Contact: Christina Massey | Christina@kunstraumllc.com
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KUNSTRAUM's programs are supported, in part, by Art in General.