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PRESS RELEASE

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Mister Fahrenheit is very pleased to announce Choir As It’s Kept, a solo exhibition by Gedi Sibony. Transforming the gallery through a cast of fastidiously staged objects and subtle interventions, Sibony presents new sculpture and painting as devices for deepening space, and experiences of it.

 

For more than two decades, Gedi Sibony has made work that probes the interplay between object, viewer, and space. Well known for his approach to found materials, which involves rescuing and reworking items of refuse frequently associated with construction and production, the artist positions his objects within carefully considered contexts as encounters, guideposts for reframing experiences of place. In this way, Sibony’s works operate as receptive objects; when activated by the viewer’s movement, they collaborate with one another and their surroundings.

 

In Choir As It’s Kept, Sibony confronts viewers with glimpses of these encounters through theatrical partitions. Scaffolding the installation is Its Power to be Infinitely, a salvaged grand stage curtain suspended to fill the gallery space from floor to ceiling. When viewed from the mezzanine, this work adheres to its onstage function of concealing, obscuring views from above along with light to narrow space as it guides visitors along a darkened pathway. At the rear of the gallery, a wooden cupboard levitates above the mezzanine’s parapet, drawing attention to peripheral glances of pockets of emptiness in the gallery below.

 

In the downstairs area, Sibony continues this revealing act by lifting the curtain, both physically and allegorically. A discreet draping maneuver splits the panels of Its Power to be Infinitely, dramatically hollowing the gallery into a cavernous, chamber-like void. Ceremonial in its entrance, this enveloping form empties the space of light and sound. Stationed in the corridor of the curtains, a towering gesture of various wood scraps stands precariously, engineered to just barely maintain stability. As viewers encounter the work at eye-level, layers of space suddenly seem to converge: the emptiness of the figure’s pictorial frame gives way to the sculptural supports behind, which collapses into the deepening tunnel between the curtain panels. A small snake-like form slithers at the foot of the wooden figure, stealthy positioned as if to suggest a prelapsarian archetype. These notions of inseparability between objects, viewer, and space reverberate in Rung Orbits, a found still-life painting scavenged from a thrift store that the artist has modified. Translating his sculptural approach to a moderate, two-dimensional scale, he reconfigures the composition by emptying it, and carefully re-staging forms with paint. Here, Sibony leaves viewers with an intimate parting reflection on objects in space – namely, the way in which the world reveals itself, and the role of the artist in doing so.

 

Born in New York in 1973, Gedi Sibony lives and works in Brooklyn. Recent solo exhibitions include Greene Naftali, New York (2020, 2018), Gladstone Gallery, Brussels (2017); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (2014); Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2009); and In the Still Epiphany, a curatorial project at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis (2012). Significant group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2018); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2018); MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015); and the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Sibony’s work belongs to the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, among others worldwide.



 

Established in the West Village of New York in 2019, Mister Fahrenheit is an independent project space for contemporary artists and curators. The program is devoted to realizing cross-disciplinary projects and collaborations outside of traditional gallery and institutional contexts. For more information, please visit www.misterfahrenheitny.com or email info@misterfahrenheitny.com.