Buzz Slutzky: For Example
For Example presents the artist’s ongoing investigation into the relationship between mark- and meaning-making.
Exhibition on view: Jan. 26 – Apr. 30, 2023
The Project Room at BRIC House
647 Fulton Street Brooklyn, NY 11217
Photo credit: Sebastian Bach
ex·am·ple (n.)
from Latin exemplum
“a sample, specimen; image, portrait;
pattern, model, precedent;
a warning example,
one that serves as a warning,”
literally “that which is taken out”*
Featuring new work by 2021-22 BRIClab: Video Artist Buzz Slutzky, For Example presents the artist’s ongoing investigation into the relationship between mark- and meaning-making. Through drawing, painting, and film, Slutzky explores the aesthetics of authority, instruction, and knowledge production.
Slutzky’s interdisciplinary practice is, in many ways, an autobiographical and historical intervention. Slutzky creates drawings and paintings based on photographic images found in instructional manuals, visual arts textbooks, interior design catalogs, and family scrapbooks, many of which were published between the 1950s and 70s. Some of these books were passed down to the artist, like the 1977 self-defense manual, Looking Forward to Being Attacked: Self-Protection for Every Woman, originally purchased by the artist’s mother, and a sculpture textbook from the artist’s grandmother, Sylvia “Syb” Wolens, who was also an artist. Though these books were designed as tools for teaching, learning, and knowing, Slutzky pauses to ask: How does their meaning change when they change hands? This central question materializes in each stroke, smudge, and re-constructed scene, urging us to consider that there may be more to the story than the so-called ‘reality’ of a photograph.
Slutzky continues testing the malleability of meaning in their essay film, One Shorter than the Other, in which they share the story of their grandmother and her life as an artist, educator, and parent with a lifelong injury resulting from possible child abuse. As a collage of dreams, memories, and reflections, this visual retelling offers intuition as an alternative to what is inherited and what is imposed. Powered by the tension between what is buried and what is brought out by the passage of time, For Example challenges the enduring authoritative power of instructional images and inherited narratives.
For Example is organized by Maria McCarthy, Curatorial Associate. It is Slutzky’s first solo exhibition.
Buzz Slutzky (they/them)
Born in 1989, Overland Park, KS; raised in Maplewood, NJ; based in Brooklyn, NY
Buzz Slutzky is a non-binary/transgender and Jewish multidisciplinary artist. They have participated in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Assembly Room, La MaMa, the 41 Cooper Gallery at Cooper Union, and at Dixon Place, all NY; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and Haverford College, both PA; Boston Center for the Arts, MA; Maryland Institute College of Art; and Columbia College, Chicago, IL. Slutzky has also participated in MIX NYC and the Frameline Film Festival. They contributed to the 2021 anthology, We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers, published by the Chicago Review Press. Slutzky was a 2021-22 BRIClab: Video Art resident, and has also had residencies at MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and NARS Foundation. They currently teach at the School of Media Studies at The New School. Slutzky received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design.
@buzzslutzky | buzzslutzky.com
Venue Information:
The Project Room, located adjacent to the Gallery in BRIC House is an added resource for video work, BRIC’s emerging curator program, small-scale exhibitions and experimental curatorial projects.
Beginning Nov. 1, 2022, attendees of any BRIC House programming will no longer have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter the building. Masks are encouraged but not required in all BRIC operated spaces. If you have questions regarding this protocol, please email Safety@bricartsmedia.org. For our full BRIC House COVID-19 policy, visit: https://www.bricartsmedia.org/safety.
Follow the link to for further details: https://www.bricartsmedia.org/art-exhibitions/buzz-slutzky-example
