Lecture

SculptureCenter, in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, is thrilled to continue the artist-led lecture series Subjective Histories of Sculpture. This program, initiated in 2006, furthers the exploration by both institutions of how contemporary artists think about sculpture: its history, legacies, and potential for innovation.

This year, SculptureCenter presents two artists to consider the thematic focus of alignment. Utilizing sculpture as a point of departure and source of inspiration, B. Wurtz and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook consider tensions and translations between the animate and inanimate, and the empirical and the subjective. Engaging with a rich collection of social, cultural, and political associations, these artists explore the material conditions of our lives and ask how we can re-think official narratives and systems of knowledge. Citing specific works, texts, and personal anecdotes taken from inside and outside cultural production, these subjective, incomplete, partial, or otherwise eclectic histories question assumptions and propose alternative methods for understanding sculpture’s evolving strategies.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook was born in 1957 in Trad, Thailand. She received a MFA from Silpakorn University in Bangkok, Thailand in 1986. In winter 2015, SculptureCenter will present Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s first comprehensive, large-scale solo exhibition in the United States. Past solo shows include the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL; the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; and Tensta Konsthall, Tensta, Sweden. Group exhibitions have taken place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Asia Society, New York; National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; the Musée de l’Objet, Blois, France; the Zentrum für Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany; the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, Italy; MDE11 (Encuentro Internacional de Medellin), Medellin, Colombia; the Changwon Asian Art Festival, Gyeongnam, South Korea; and the Singapore Art Museum. Araya represented Thailand at the Venice Biennale in 2005 and was a featured artist in dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany; the California Pacific Triennial; the Dojima River Biennial, Osaka, Japan; the Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; Sydney Biennale, Australia; the Nanjing Biennale, China; the International Video Art Biennial in Tel Aviv, Israel; the Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia; the Incheon Women Artists Biennale, South Korea; the Taipei Biennial, Taiwan; the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; the Carnegie International, Pittsburg, PA; the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; the Johannesburg Biennial, South Africa; and the Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland, Australia.

SculptureCenter at The New School is organized by the SculptureCenter in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.