Last night, the Pascal Gallery in the Berrie Center introduced a new exhibition, “cut scene, a pseudonym for structure.” The exhibition is curated by Katherine C. Adams, an assistant curator at Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) Adams won the Ramapo Curatorial Prize, awarded yearly to a second-year graduate student at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies.
“cut scene” features artists Nairy Baghramian, Jason Hirata, Christie Neptune and Manfred Pernice. The curatorial text states that, “the exhibition features sculptural and lens-based works in which artistic production is decoupled from narratives of historical unity and forms of structural integrity…the times that underlie them are punctuated by loopholes and possible failures.”
Baghramian is an Iranian artist who has worked in Berlin since 1984. Her piece “Side Leaps” consists of two separate sculptural sketches. The first that appears to your right when you enter the gallery is colored yellow with markers. The second at the opposite end of the room is drawn with wax pencil and pencil on paper.
The idea of including these pieces was to demonstrate the failure that comes occasionally with the creation of art. Both sketches were for sculptures that were never built.
Hirata works in Princeton, N.J. and has four pieces in the exhibition. The most notable were scraps of tape, cardboard boxes and other materials strewn about the gallery. This piece worked as an implicit performance, as it demonstrated the unseen work that goes into making sculptures.
Neptune is a first-generation West Indian American artist. Her video performance piece involved two Black women set against a blank white space. The white space represents “the white cube,” a term referring to the gallery space — known as a clean, blank slate that is only added to by the artworks curated within it. By placing two Black bodies into this kind of space, it emphasizes the high visibility that comes with the setting.
Finally, Pernice is an artist who was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1963. His pieces consist of two boxes constructed out of particleboard, formica, oil-based enamel paint and vinyl numbers, as well as small diary-esque booklets viewers are able to flip through. The boxes each have a date on them: a purple one with the date “03.11.07” and a white one with the date “20.02.01.”
The purpose of these boxes are to demonstrate how time has been manipulated by the materialism of the modern era. Meanwhile, the booklets feature different photos by Pernice with quirky captions that call out the appearances or identities of the subjects involved.
During the opening reception, Adams spoke about the exhibition as well as her experience as a curator. She mentioned her interest in performance art and elaborated on her reasoning for curating an exhibition such as this one.
“Originally, I had been thinking about what it might mean to make an art object in the wrong medium,” she explained. “I was thinking a lot about this failure of form to hold the idea of an object or the idea of an artwork.”
The exhibition will be in the Pascal Gallery until Dec. 11. It is open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesdays 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.
pbortner@ramapo.edu
Featured photo by Peyton Bortner, Ramapo News
