Shift

2023
178” x 132” x 132”
Steel, drains, vents, labor
Site-specific

This site-specific installation considers the porous nature of institutions and social forms. The metaphor of relational emergence is reinforced by elements like drains along with the sculpture interacting with the gallery architecture. The repeated steel forms mimic the efficient use of modularity in systems of economic exchange and social behavior.

Phrases normally found in public that dictate movement in social space are sand blasted on the metal that is colored blue through an intuitive heating process. Labor is listed as material to acknowledge the labor required by both artist and the community who supported the artist in making the work.

For this particular project, I consider the following people contributors:

Ashleigh Abbott, Yasi Alipour, Bel Andrade, Chong Chin, Elizabeth Walz Chin, Daniel Chou, Ben Dimock, Andrea Geyer, Ben Gould, Kris Grey, Fiel Guhit, Terike Haapoja, Jesse Harding, Remi Hirschtick, Caroline Kindelt, Arden Kraatz, Lan Thao Lam, Ting Lau, Myles Lawrence Briggs, Le’Andrea LeSeur, Chris Lin, Jill Magid, Summer McCroskey, Ash Moniz, Ramon Mussenden, Kat Nash, Hali Nelson, Evelina Nolin, Henrik Nordahl, Victoria Norton, Tony Petrillo, Eriola Pira, Rit Premnath, Chad Repp, Gino Romero, Rollo Romig, Amina Ross, Pauline Rossignol, Shay Salehi, Sej Sanghvi, Michelle Silva, Becky Song, Kaegan Sparks, Clipber Tran, Catherine Telford Keogh, Sabrina Thompson, Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Richard Valentin, Damien Vera, Daisy Wong, Valaria or oscar, Boya Ye, Noah Zhou, all those who participated in the part-time faculty strike at The New School, employees of Rapid Steel, and my physical therapists Craig Feuerman, Ari Neulander, and Matthew Procopio.

With this project and the ones that will follow, I promise to make art at the nexus of intuition and the social forms I participate in and find perplexing. I am also committed to giving credit to those who illuminate my path towards art making and collaborate towards collective intuitions*.

*Collective intuition is a term I am using to describe the porous nature of social forms. It points to how deviations from norms—in relating to others—push against the boundaries of communal knowledge. Collective intuition lingers in the possibility of a multitude of commons. Here the boundary and logic of social forms is ever-mutable.

Exhibition website