A Casual Pincer

Heather Bursch Mary Helena Clark Samantha Roth

AWHRHWAR is please to present A Casual Pincer, our first show of the new year, curated by Brica Wilcox. As a new addition to our "editions shelf" Samantha Roth has produced a wall-hanging, ceramic series which will be available at the gallery.

Perhaps an intuitive rehearsal for constant performance. Gestures, sometimes posturing, petrified, misplaced, even mismanaged point off screen, off stage, into and around absent bodies. Attempting to tame the tension of monotony and the discomforts of anticipation, A Casual Pincer takes a crack at our corporeal predicaments.

Heather Bursch’s Hinge: Periphery to Mark an Interior is an ever-growing work comprised of marble and brass fragments, each piece corresponding to a measurement of the artist’s body. This iteration, titled Caryatid, includes elbow to elbow, base of neck to right ankle and middle knuckle of right ring finger to middle knuckle of right pinky finger, among others. Hiding in plain sight, the expressive vagaries of the body alluded to by Bursch are manifested by Clark and Roth.

Roving eyes stare back; discrete movements break off and begin again. Through interrupted allusions to sensation and expression, Mary Helena Clark’s Palms both tracks and splits our modes of perception. In her film, metronomic time ping-pongs back and forth, perpetually looped. Experience temporarily coheres, only to disperse as relentless distraction bleeds into discontent.

In Samantha Roth’s Improv series, objects visually pun on idiomatic expressions, truisms and other one-liners. Acting out phrases like Stockholm Syndrome, Spare Pair, A Mother Nose, and Ham Fisted, Roth’s objects transpose the physical and linguistic stunts of a comedian’s improvised set. Materials that are usually bit players — scraps of paper, push pins, hair bands — are now given starring roles. Using a language of crumples, slits, pinches and suspension, Roth harnesses her objects to the material concerns of drawing as well as the comedic process.

Heather Bursch received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from CalArts in 2009. In 2010/11 she was a fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program. She is the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship in Digital and Electronic Arts (2014), Experimental Television Center Grant (2011), CCI Investing in Artists Grant (2010) and MacDowell and Skowhegan fellowships (2009). She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Mary Helena Clark is an artist working in film, video, and installation. Her work brings together disparate sounds and images to explore dissociation and embodiment. Using the conventions of narrative, language, and genre, her films explore shifting subjectivities and the mechanisms of sense. Her work has recently been exhibited at DOCUMENT, Chicago; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; JOAN, Los Angeles; Kadist, San Francisco; the 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Finland; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania; and at festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Samantha Roth lives in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from University of Southern California, Roski School of Art. Her work has been shown in Los Angeles and beyond, including at Luis De Jesus, Jancar Jones, and Human Resources.