NEW YORK: Zachary Fabri

Zachary Fabri, lorem ipsum Prince Hall 1791, image via artingeneral.org.

lorem ipsum

September 13 – October 25, 2014

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 13, 6 – 8pm

ART IN GENERAL

79 Walker Street

New York, NY

From Art in General press release:

Art in General is pleased to present lorem ipsum, a newly commissioned installation by Zachary Fabri for the Storefront Project Space curated by Kristen Chappa.

Best known for his video work and performances that feature the artist as protagonist, Art in General will present a lesser-known trajectory within Zachary Fabri’s practice. Here, he will create a site-responsive installation for the public storefront space featuring a series of large-format graphic prints. This project, titled lorem ipsum, conflates the aesthetics of American Apparel with American Black Nationalist titles predating 1920, when Marcus Garvey popularized Pan-Africanism in the United States and abroad. The installation, manifesting as printed signage, borrows the design and marketing strategy of a trendy urban clothing store chain in order to brand a political ideology and reroute possible perceptions of the exhibition site.

Fabri’s artistic practice seeks to create a space for discourse around social and political systems of oppression through artworks that manifest in a range of mediums, including drawing, performance, photography, sculpture, and video. Continually investigating the movement and politics of the body, Fabri’s work prompts viewers to locate themselves as “insider” or “outsider.” Fabri often meditates on the memory and weight of history; the ideologies and beliefs that define us. His works offer reminders of the ideas that shape identity—exploring its limits and possible transformations.

Zachary Fabri was born in Miami, Florida in 1977 and currently lives in Brooklyn. He received a Bachelor of Fine Art in graphic design from the New World School of the Arts, Miami, in 2000, and later relocated to New York City to receive a MFA from Hunter College in 2007. Fabri’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at Sequences Real-time Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland; the Nordic Biennale: Momentum, Moss, Norway; Gallery Open, Berlin; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Real Art Ways, Hartford; the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, New York. Fabri has completed residencies at the Jardim Canadá Art and Technology Center in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and LMCC in New York City. Upcoming exhibitions include Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond at the Brooklyn Museum, October 2014 – January 2015.

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Bigger Than Shadows

Rico Gatson, Untitled (Nat Turner), 2011. Image via Dodge-Gallery.com.

Curated by Rich Blint and Ian Cofre

November 10 - December 22, 2012

Opening Reception: November 10, 2012, 6-8pm

DODGEgallery

15 Rivington Street

New York,  NY

Bigger Than Shadows is a group exhibition that explores recent work on the black male body that refashions, riffs on, or re-inflects dominant constructions about the figure known as the black male. Black maleness conjures a host of contradictory associations in the American imagination—from questions about historical morality, creative virtuosity, inherent pathology, to notions of outsized masculinity and, paradoxically, the very absence of masculine authority. Bigger Than Shadows aims to clear space for a timely exchange among emerging and established artists about contemporary and future-oriented visual re-presentations of racialized corporeality—of the black male body in the flesh. Participating artists include Derrick Adams, Noah Davis, Rico Gatson, Adler Guerrier, Lyle Ashton Harris, Duron Jackson, Jayson Keeling, Yashua Klos, Deana Lawson, Kambui Olujimi, Ebony G. Patterson, Robert Pruitt, Jacolby Satterwhite and Zachary Fabri.

Duron Jackson will present a new sculpture titled Bones Crusade, 2012, which expands on his previous work on incarceration, surveillance, and the influence and distortionary effects of these systems. Other sculptural works by Rico Gatson and Adler Guerrier draw from multiple references, engaging the urban landscape and its impression on the body through abstractions of language and perception.

The revelatory photographic contributions from Lyle Ashton Harris, Jayson Keeling, and Deana Lawson are documents of subjects that defy immediate categorization. Harris's and Lawson's examinations of Southern subcultures join Keeling, who is working with a bust of his own face cast by John Ahearn, rephotographing the sculpture to draw attention to subtleties of form through distance.

Yashua Klos's constructions are both fragile and monumental, negotiating aspects of identity through fragmentation, collage, and camouflage. Similarly reconstructed, an array of visual styles will be on display including a contribution from The Human Structure Series (2011) by Derrick Adams, an example of Ebony Patterson's Species Series (2011), a new, large-scale drawing by Houston-based artist Robert Pruitt, a quiet and ambiguous figurative painting by Los Angeles-based Noah Davis, new work by Kambui Olujimi, and a virtual, Hieronymus Bosch-esque video tableau titled Country Ball, 1989-2012, by Jacolby Satterwhite that is built from memory rather than morality.

Rich Blint earned his Ph.D. in the Program in American Studies at New York University. His areas of specialty include African-American literature and culture; the literature of the Anglophone Caribbean; as well as racial visuality, media studies, and U.S. popular culture. He is co-editor of a special issue of African American Review on James Baldwin (forthcoming Winter 2013); guest editor of the Winter/Spring 2008 issue of Black Renaissance Noir, a journal of pan-African culture and politics; and has written critically about the work of Wangechi Mutu and Deana Lawson. The recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the C.L.R. James Institute, Rich has taught courses and guest lectured at New York University, Columbia University School of Law, Vassar College, and the Brecht Forum. He serves on the Executive Board of Vanderbilt University’s Issues in Critical Investigation: The African Diaspora and is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies at Hunter College, The City University of New York.

Ian Cofre, a graduate of Columbia University, is an independent curator working primarily with emerging artists. Frequently collaborating with Omar Lopez-Chahoud, recent projects include co-writing "The Art Fair Effect," an essay for the Bronx Museum's Taking AIM!The Business of Being an Artist Today (2011) and co-curating the exhibitions Tracing the Unseen Border (2011) at La MaMa La Galleria and Southern Exposure (2009) at Dumbo Arts Center. Other shows include Behind Closed Doors (2011), a curated solo project by Manuela Viera-Gallo at Y Gallery and The Doubtful Guest (2010) at Kill Devil Hill in Greenpoint, NY. He most recently served as Director of the now-closed Sue Scott Gallery and Studio Manager for Mickalene Thomas before that.

Exhibit Link