On May 3rd fordPROJECT presented Heading for a fall: the art of entropy. Their third exhibition celebrates entropy “the tendency of matter to move from order to disorder.” The group exhibition featured artwork by four emerging New York based artists: Lisha Bai, Lucy Indiana Dodd, Alexander May and Naama Tsabar, who are “linked together by notions of entropy, alteration, deformation and use of natural materials.
The exhibition offers individual interpretations of entropy – the concept that matter moves naturally from order to disorder – through distinctive and imperfect works of sculpture, painting, drawing and installation. Naama Tsabar’s installation, Sweat 2, which was featured in fordPROJECT’s previous exhibition and was meant to literally fall apart while on view, served as inspiration for the themes and mechanisms of alteration, deformation and use of natural materials seen throughout entropy.
In a work that explores the notion of disintegration, Alexander May glues triangles of black silk into a large, fabric installation suspended from the ceiling. The commissioned work existsdelicately but with a dramatic presence. Also included is a recent “text piece” by May that speaks to a more poetic notion of entropy and layers.
In her paintings on display, sculptor Lucy Indiana Dodd distorted canvasses that project from the wall. Dodd creates these works by wetting the stretcher and then bending it into a new form. She then paints the surface with a mixture of sand and pigments from natural materials.
Lisha Bai plays with ideas of gravity and erosion in a series of rammed earth sculptures. These sculptures, columns of varying heights, seem to decay before the viewers’ eyes. Bai also creates large sculptures made by placing different colored sands within a Plexibox. The effect, undulating layers of colors, changes over time as gravity takes hold and the sculpture is moved. Two of these Plexibox formations are on view in entropy.
At the same time that entropy opens, works by Sislej Xhafa will be featured on the second floor of the dual level penthouse. Xhafa, well-known for his artistic investigations of global issues and the subject of an upcoming retrospective in Naples, Italy, presents two vastly different works that reflect the complexities of modern society, a theme that appears regularly in the artist’s politically-driven repertoire. The first work, Theatre who know everything (2009), offers an inside look at Sudanese refugees living in Cairo as they play music in a darkened room. The lighting only renders visible one member of the group, communicating the human struggle for community and artistic expression in societies where such rights are denied. This work has not been exhibited before. Xhafa’s second work, Still Untitled (2003), is a cement half-consumed bag from Israel with writing in Hebrew and Arabic positioned in a corner of the gallery as if it were left and forgotten.
The exhibition will be on display until June 17, 2011.
fordPROJECT, launched in January 2011 under the direction of Rachel Vancelette and Tim Goossens, is a gallery space designed for site-specific installations, exhibitions, artist commissions, art collectives, curatorial programs, collaborative initiatives, unique events and more. For more details please visit www.fordproject.com or email info@fordproject.com.
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Indira Cesarine for XXXX Magazine
Photos by Jeffrey Gamble for XXXX Magazine
