Monkey Riding Alligator

Ryan Crowley, Stuart Hawkins, Sacha Ingber, Fabienne Lasserre, Lindsay Lawson, Lior Modan

Curated by Sacha Ingber and Lior Modan

"This subtle observation reminded me of a small painting Júlia had painted years ago and hung at the head of her bed. She had never painted anything before or after; that painting was an anomaly. I remember seeing it at some point during the move, already free of its packaging, leaning, as if forgotten, against a piece of furniture, a piece of tape still stuck to its frame; and then another time when opening a drawer months later, and once again in the kitchen, where it remained for a very short time. The painting snuck among us as if it were a natural being.

It changed places, appearing and disappearing, but we never spoke of it. I never asked Júlia whose painting it was, and she never told me she had painted it. And for the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps Júlia had not painted it. It was not signed. Maybe it had been a gift. But from whom? Why did Júlia never mention it? There was an even more outrageous possibility: maybe Júlia thought that it was mine; that I had painted it. Of course, I was certain I had never painted a thing, but I wasn't entirely sure I hadn't received it as a gift. Patients had given me all sorts of things, not only stabs. The subject of the painting (a troupe of monkeys riding alligators around a lake) did not seem to have been born of Júlia's brain or mine; nor did it suit our respective sensibilities."

- Borgestein, Sergio Bizzio

The artists in this exhibition are constantly asking their work to become something it cannot. They are not loyal to the medium used, casting aside frameworks they revisit often. Crowley, Hawkins, Ingber, Lasserre, Lawson, and Modan work with identifiers that provide respite in place of resolution. The cutouts, translucencies and declarations puncture holes in reality. In a pinch, they could floss their teeth with a strand of hair.

Please don’t mistake the objects in this room as only vessels, strainers, or extruders; some are portals. A bird's eye view of the space could reveal these as registries of sensorial facts—a pale light, a plastic thread surrounding some bodily fluids, solids, and skin. The objects have conversations with one another. Some popular dinner table topics: water and sponge, signs and sunset-holders, filling and straining, shades of pink. All part of a capsule of mundane slow things of this current moment. A raw salmon is served on a platter.

Ryan Crowley (b. 1983, Boston, MA) lives and works in New York. He received his MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012 and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2007. He was a 2014 recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship grant and is participating in the Wayfarers’ artist in residence program in Brooklyn, NY this July and August. Recent gallery exhibitions include 1708 Gallery, VA, Sediment Gallery, VA, and Coustof Waxman, New York.

Inhabiting a space between photography and painting, Stuart Hawkins works on paper and portrays sculptural scenarios that reflect universal aspects of our contemporary, human experience. Her work has been exhibited at Zach Feuer Gallery, New York; Peres Projects, Berlin; Artists Space, New York; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn; Lincoln Center, New York; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. She has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Art Grant, an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographers Grant, and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Modern Painters. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Sacha Ingber (b. 1987, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. Ingber has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center (2010), Catwalk Artist Residency (2009), and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2013). Recent exhibitions were held at Clemente Soto Velez, New York; Reynolds Gallery, VA; Hillyer art space, Washington, DC; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; DaSilva Gallery, New Haven, CT; Kunstraum, New York; Spring Break Art Show, New York; and Coustof Waxman, New York.

Fabienne Lasserre grew up in Montreal, Canada, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Recent shows include Fabienne Lasserre and Annette Wehrhahn at Safe Gallery (2016); Les Approches (2015) at Parisian Laundry, Montreal; Here Like a Story Like a Picture and a Mirror (2013) at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; and The Us and the It (2012), at Gallery Diet, Miami. Lasserre has participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, amongst these, C.Ar.D. in città (2015), where several large recent sculptures were displayed in a solo project at the Palazzo Costa Trettenero in Piacenza, Italy. Other group shows include Beyond the End, Kadist Foundation, Paris (2014); Outside the Lines, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2013); Saber Desconocer, Museo de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia (2013); Cheat Chains and Telephone, Kansas Gallery, NY (2012); La Triennale québecoise (2011), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Come Through (2010), Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; Foreign Object (2010), Regina Rex, New York; and Hace Mucho que No Te Veo (2010), at Espacio Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile. She is a recipient of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program award (2016-17), has completed a residency at Dieu Donné Papermill (Workspace Program, 2012), and received two Project Grants for Visual Artists from the Canada Council for the Arts (2013 and 2014).

Lindsay Lawson was born in the United States and lives in Berlin. Lawson received her BFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, her MFA in New Genres from UCLA, and attended the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Her work spans media such as film, video, installation, photography, sculpture, performance, text, and a particular type of contractual legal agreements she calls Arrangements. Her practice often deals with the presence and agency of objecthood in virtual and physical spaces. Numerous recent projects investigate states of infatuation with virtual personas and both virtual and physical objects. In 2016, she presented a large-scale performance at the site of the reconstruction of the historic Berliner Schloss in addition to a symposium about objectum sexuality as part of the 9th Berlin Biennale. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Gillmeier Rech, Berlin; Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer, Vienna; Herald St., London; Frutta Gallery, Rome; LAXART, Los Angeles; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Carroll/Fletcher, London; 1646, The Hague; Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Brussels; Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig; and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto.

Lior Modan (b. 1983, Tel-Aviv) lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his BFA with honors from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Triumph, Chicago; Contemporary by Golconda Gallery, Tel Aviv; and NURTUREart Gallery in New York. His work has been shown at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; NEWD Art Show, Brooklyn; Peninsula Art Space, Brooklyn; Neiman Gallery, New York; Coustof Waxman Gallery, New York; Petach-Tikva Museum, Israel; and Haifa Museum, Israel. He has been the recipient of the AICF Award, the Bezalel Excellence Prize, the Phi Kappa Phi Award, a VSC Fellowship supported by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and was a 2013-2014 Artist-in-Residence at the LMCC Workspace program.