untitled, 2024.
Site specific work installed in New Uncanny Gallery's inaugural exhibition "OVERLOAD" in NYC.
materials: LED, wood, paint, 3d printed supports, electronics
OVERLOAD
May 23 - June 3, 2024
Open Sun-Mon 1-6 pm
New Uncanny is excited to present our first group exhibition, OVERLOAD. OVERLOAD investigates the neverending cycle of cleaning and sullying which grounds us in the history and present condition of our space – a rug cleaning facility, left in disrepair. In enacting a critical intervention into the cleanliness cycle of the building, we have reconsidered new possibilities for the space, which once thrived as a hub of sanitation and was subsequently abandoned to accumulate dust and grime. Our exhibition will inaugurate a new round of cleaning rituals, from heavy-duty hands-on disinfection tasks to artistic, conceptual work interrogating the pure-impure binary which characterizes our venue’s past.
Contemporary philosopher Olli Lagerspetz defines dirtiness a contextual, relative “deviation from the ideal state of the object, the state of the object as it really is or should be”(1). As we engage the exhibition space, it will become evident that retroactive approximations of cleanliness are necessarily unstable, and the industrial cleaning facility will be irrevocably altered by our efforts. Artists will embrace the materiality of the pollution, dirt and filth which surround their works, allowing elements of accumulated waste to interact with their art, either through their presence or absence. A worn-down saddle and animal bones come together in the shape of a goddess, knitted plastic bags conceal a friendly face, and a king of trash overlooks the room. Performers’ voices echo on about cycles, messes and content, filling our tarnished rooms. As our artists play with the dissonance between such conceptual ideals, they will overload the dichotomy between the clean and the filthy, expanding the categories to understand where they finally break apart.
Participating artists: Kate Bancroft, Dahlia Bloomstone, Karewith Casas, Emily Clayton, Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov, Cal Fish, Aashish Gadani, Elvira Horvei, Yasmine Anlan Huang, Ying Chiun Lee, Vijay Masharani, Dylan McLaughlin, Levani (Levan Mindiashvili), Anna Ting Moller, Ash Moniz, Jake Muilenburg, Liam Murray, Jack Perry, E Rady, Alex Schmidt, Sydney Shavers, Johanna Strobel, Thomas Tait, Anthony Torrano, Emily Wichtrich, C Spencer Yeh; curated by: Dasha Aksenova;
New Uncanny Gallery, located in West Harlem, is an artist-run transdisciplinary exhibition space founded in 2024 by Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov with co-founders Dahlia Bloomstone and Dasha Aksenova. The project seeks to support artists through exhibition opportunities, public programs, and events.
We are a space committed to investigating art that reflects on the nature of the uncanny in all its definitions and ethos — aesthetic, subversive, technological, surreal, cognitive, mythological, or existential. We survey how this concept intersects with our surrounding environment and with various disciplines and visualities.
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(1) “What is Dirt”, Olli Lagerspetz, https://archive.philosophersmag.com/what-is-dirt/
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