SculptureCenter | In Practice: Literally means collapse

In Practice: Literally means collapse
Marco Barrera, Allen Hung-Lun Chen, Violet Dennison, Enrique Garcia, Ignacio Gatica, Cherisse Gray, Jessica Kairé, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Alan Martín Segal, Stella Zhong, and Monsieur Zohore

From built environments and structures of circulation, to protocols and belief systems that shape social and political subjects, infrastructures are in a constant generative friction with decay. Rituals of maintenance are designed and performed to prevent what is constructed from being subjectively ruined. Diagnosing a contemporary obsession with ruins, artist and theorist Svetlana Boym writes, “‘Ruin’ literally means ‘collapse’ — but actually, ruins are more about remainders and reminders.” [1] Boym elaborates that, as sites, they can trigger both potential nostalgias and imagined futures. Existing among ruins is existing among spaces of asynchronous time — of histories and timescales collapsed.
The artists in the exhibition trace collapse through material and metaphor. Some artists in the exhibition examine the failures of cities and other containers of information, working with and against the anxieties of deterioration. Some remind us of the strategic disintegration and flattening of symbols and aesthetics. Others embrace the breaking down of space, time, language, and other familiar logics. In Practice: Literally means collapse is a series of overlapping studies into timescales of ruin and what doesn’t yet remain.
In Practice: Literally means collapse features newly commissioned sculptures, installations, and video works by eleven artists: Marco Barrera, Allen Hung-Lun Chen, Violet Dennison, Enrique Garcia, Ignacio Gatica, Cherisse Gray, Jessica Kairé, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Alan Martín Segal, Stella Zhong, and Monsieur Zohore. The exhibition is curated by 2022 In Practice Curatorial Fellow Camila Palomino.
Camila Palomino is an independent curator and researcher based in New York City. Her research is invested in the aesthetic relationships between imaging and security technologies, urban infrastructures, and social memory. Camila is currently curatorial assistant at the Vera List Center, the 2021-2022 Curator in Residence at Abrons Arts Center, and the 2022 In Practice Curatorial Fellow at SculptureCenter. She has previously held curatorial positions and contributed research to exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, The Drawing Center, and the 58th Carnegie International. She is a curatorial consultant at Amie Gross Architects on a project that commissions artworks by Queens-based artists for new affordable housing buildings in the borough. Camila has also been a visiting lecturer in The Photography Program at Bard College. She holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
[1] Svetlana Boym, “Ruinophilia,” in The Off-Modern (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
In Practice
SculptureCenter’s In Practice open call program supports emerging artists and curators in creating new work for exhibition at SculptureCenter. Since 2003, In Practice has provided more than 230 artists with the essential resources of space, funding, time, curatorial support, and administrative guidance to help turn their ideas into reality. Exemplifying the spirit of SculptureCenter’s mission, In Practice supports innovative artwork, fosters experimentation, and introduces audiences to underrecognized practice and new ideas. The program offers participants the opportunity to develop and present work in what is often their first institutional exhibition in New York City.

In Practice: Literally means collapse, installation view, SculptureCenter, New York, 2022. Photo: Charles Benton