CRN: 11679
Credits: 3
This class explores sculpture’s capacities as anti-monumental, ephemeral, and performance-based using non-traditional materials and structural methods. These investigations are framed within the broader context of the role traditional sculpture has played in marking political and social power in the public sphere, as well as recent calls for monument removal. We visit sites around the city where sculptures have been removed, counter-narratives installed, and where hidden histories are embedded in seemingly innocuous works. Within this context, we use modes of construction such as tension, gravity, balance, time, and contingency. These forces are examined by creating artworks with non-traditional and ephemeral materials (rope, magnets, fog, and ice). We will create artworks that undergo change over time: degrading or solidifying. With these techniques, we delve into sculpture’s expanded possibilities. Related artists and writers include: Senga Nengudi, Gego, Ruth Asawa, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Eric N. Mack, Kellie Jones, Karen Barad, David Getsy, and Julietta Singh.
Faculty Bio:
Jonah Jan Groeneboer is a conceptual multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. In his visual practice, he investigates how representation and abstraction connect to different forms of visibility, legibility, and comprehension. Groeneboer often works in abstraction to address the politics of representation. He developed this strategy to examine the expectation that trans people be readily available for visual scrutiny. Groeneboer’s work has shown at David Zwirner Gallery (2018), Boston University Galleries (2017), MoMA (2016), Art in General (2016), the Queens Museum (2016), CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (2016), MoMA PS1 (2015), Contemporary Art Museum Houston (2015), Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts in Winnipeg (2015), Andrew Edlin Gallery (2013), Shoshawna Wayne Gallery (2010), and Exile, Berlin (2010), among others. Essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Art21.com, Mute Magazine, Artforum.com, Temporary Art Review, Art Journal, and in the essay in Pink Labour on Golden Streets, “Appearing Differently: Abstraction’s Transgender and Queer Capacities.” David Getsy’s 2016 essay “Seeing Commitments: Jonah Groeneboer’s Ethics of Discernment” was included in the “Opacities” section of Getsy and Che Gosset’s “A Syllabus on Transgender and Nonbinary Methods for Art and Art History” (Art Journal, Winter 2021). Residencies include Ox-Bow School of Art, the Fire Island Artist Residency, Recess, and the Film/Video Studio Residency at The Wexner Center for the Arts. He is a grant recipient from Canada Council for the Arts (2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022) and NYSCA (2023), and is a Creative Capital Awardee (2024). As a writer, Groeneboer has participated in numerous panels and symposiums. His essays on transgender representation have been published in Texte Zur Kunst (2023) and Studies in Gender and Sexuality (2023). His most recent solo show Selected Views was presented at The Kitchen NYC (2024).
