A Promise Is a Cloud includes artworks by Ohad Meromi, Adam Pendleton, Erin Shirreff, and Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries.
Ohad Meromi, Stepanova, 2011
Painted aluminum, dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Harris Lieberman Gallery
This large modular work, composed of 13 conical forms, reconsiders public sculpture as a stage and explores the relationship between architectural forms and interaction and agency. Over the course of the work’s yearlong installation, Ohad Meromi invites members of the public to move individual elements of the piece on two specific occasions, expanding upon his thinking of the sculpture as being “open” to new possibilities. The work’s title, Stepanova, is a reference to the Russian avant-garde constructivist artist Vavara Stepanova (1894–1958), whose work also involved theatrical set design. A sister piece to Stepanova, fabricated by Meromi in wood, is called Popova, in reference to Lyubov Popova, a collaborator of Stepanova’s.
Adam Pendleton, Black Dada Flags, 2011
16 vinyl flags, 5 x 7 feet each
Courtesy the artist and Shane Campbell Gallery
With this work Adam Pendleton furthers his Black Dada project, a long-term exploration pairing two concepts: Dada, the early 20th-century absurdist cultural movement, and the notion of “black” as an open-ended signifier. Inspired by a 1960s performance in Central Park by the language-poet Hannah Weiner that was said to incorporate flags and abstract poetry, the work features 16 large silver, black, and white flags along the axis of the Myrtle Promenade. Together the flags play with the traditional function of the flag as a recognizable and authoritative symbol. Each flag features a unique and increasingly abstract design drawn from the visual language of Pendleton’s Black Dada, in this case derived in part from reproduced images of Sol LeWitt’s sculpture series Incomplete Open Spaces (1974). Like LeWitt’s variable forms, the flags create a new variation on Black Dada as the wind folds the fabric in innumerable ways.
Erin Shirreff, Sculpture for Snow, 2011
Painted aluminum
Courtesy Lisa Cooley Fine Arts
Sculpture for Snow by Erin Shirreff considers what is lost in translation between two- and three-dimensional forms. Expanding upon her 2006 video involving several iconic Tony Smith sculptures, this new work transforms the film’s maquette into a life-size sculpture and extends the artist’s ongoing investigation of the relationship between objects, images, and time. In situ, the dimensionality of the sculpture shifts with the viewer’s perspective—from one angle the sculpture shows a verisimilitude to Smith’s iconic work, Amarylis (1965–68). At another angle, it can be likened to a drawing or a large-scale folded piece of paper: weightless and airy. Likewise, the texture and surface of this sculpture will be transformed by the natural elements, gathering snow and rain throughout the yearlong installation and further changing how we experience the work.
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, The Struggle Continues, 2011
Flash animation, 8:42 min loop
Courtesy the artist
This web-based Flash animation, created using Monaco type and original jazz music, flashes resounding declarations on a screen in the MetroTech Commons plaza at a manic pace. The Struggle Continues by Young-Hae Change Heavy Industries originally launched in 2007 and has been modified in this new version and created in response to the exhibition invitation. As the narrative unfolds over nearly nine minutes, the dialogue juxtaposes a critical discussion of class, freedom, and equality, with a struggle for the most human of desires, love and sex.
