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Mar 12

Soft Territories

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Upcoming Exhibition Events

June 23, 5:00pm – 8:00pm | Closing Reception
with jazz by the Rodrigo Recabarren trio
More details here

About the Exhibition

Knockdown Center is pleased to present Soft Territories, a group exhibition presenting works by Victoria Manganiello, Simón Sepúlveda, and Sarah Zapata exploring the ways in which notions of movement, migration, and locality are expressed in contemporary textile practices. The warp and weft of the loom – the basic structure of textiles being composed of longitudinal and transverse components – echoes current critical thinking about verticality and horizontality in social and economic structures. In the artworks included, the intersection of the two planes of woven thread express ideas about politics, territories, technologies, and interactions, while enabling spaces of softness, warmth, and shelter.

The questions of memory, identity, and borders are central to Zapata’s symbiotic practice of textile making and writing. Manganiello uses hand-spun yarn and mixed natural and synthetic color dyes to create hand-woven textiles that explore intersections between materiality, technology, geography, and storytelling. Sepúlveda mixes digital and organic elements to create tapestries –a historical artifact for narrating epic tales– that reflect on experiences of migration.

Past Exhibition Events

May 4, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Opening Reception
May 4, 6:30 pm | Curator Tour
Curator Carolina Arévalo will lead visitors on a tour of the exhibition
May 5, 5:00 pm | Devotional with Sarah Zapata
More details here

About the Artists

Victoria Manganiello is an installation and mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been exhibited throughout the USA and internationally including at the Queens Museum, Tang Museum, Pioneer Works, and the Museum of Art and Design. Victoria was recently named one of Forbes list 30 under 30 artists for 2019. She is an adjunct professor at both NYU and Parson’s The New School. Exploring the intersections between materiality, technology, geography and storytelling, Victoria’s installation work, abstract paintings, and kinetic sculptures are made meticulously with hand-woven textiles using hand-spun yarn and hand-mixed natural and synthetic color dyes.

Sarah Zapata makes work with labor-intensive processes such as handweaving, rope coiling, latch hooking, and sewing by intersecting theories of gender and ethnicity with pre-colonial histories and techniques. Making work with meditative, mechanical means, her current work deals with the multiple facets of her complex identity: a Texan living in Brooklyn, a lesbian raised as an evangelical Christian, a first generation American of Latin American descent, a contemporary artist inspired by ancient civilizations, an artist challenging the history of craft as “women’s work” within the realm of art. Zapata’s work has been exhibited at the New Museum (NY), El Museo del Barrio (NY), Museum of Art and Design (NY), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (NY), Boston University (MA), LAXART (CA), Deli Gallery (NY), Arsenal Contemporary (NY), and Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center (NY). Zapata has also completed recent residencies at MASS MoCA (MA), A-Z West (CA), and Wave Hill (NY), and is the recent recipient of an NFA Project Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. Zapata was an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2016.

Simón Sepúlveda works on textile mixing bold graphics, with social and personal issues, like migration and identity. His work is a hyper-awareness of the precarious nature in trying to find a personal balance and also worldwide balance across migration, economics, and human rights issues. This worldwide perspective and artist direction within textiles has led him to fulfill a sense of purpose with his work. Sepúlveda’s work has been exhibited at the Chilean Museum of Contemporary Art (Chile), Museum of Fine Arts (Chile), Visual Arts Museum (Chile), and Aqui Gallery (Chile). Sepúlveda is currently living and working at San Francisco as a designer for Apple. Previously he has worked as a Designer at Sagmeister&Walsh (New York), Javier Jaén Studio (Barcelona) and Felicidad (Santiago).

About the Curator

Carolina Arévalo is a researcher and curator. Her approach towards the idea of image as a mental state is center in the fundamental concepts of forms: the reinterpretation and representation of societies explained through historical styles, as they occur in art, design, and architecture. All objects and images communicate and can be recognized as texts; artifacts weave the public and private aspects, social and cultural conventions and the way in which people and position themselves in a context. Currently, Arévalo is also curating Sheila Hicks: Reencuentros at the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art (2019), which aims to establish dialogues between contemporary textile art and pre-Columbian textile art. Recently, she has published in Hilos Libres: Sheila Hicks (Puebla, Mexico: 2018), Jaume Xifra: Cat. Exhibit (Girona, Spain: 2018), and the article Anni Albers: Influjos Precolombinos y Legado (Goethe Institute, Colombia: 2019-upcoming).

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Knockdown Center’s exhibitions are selected through a competitive open call for proposals. Through a multi-round process, exhibition proposals are reviewed by Knockdown Center’s Curatorial Advisory Board and selected based on quality, distinctiveness, and response to Knockdown Center’s unique site and context within an ecosystem of live events.

Founded in 2015, the Knockdown Center’s Curatorial Advisory Board is currently comprised of seven sitting arts professionals with diverse but overlapping interests and fields of expertise. The Curatorial Advisory Board meets bi-annually to provide critical feedback on a wide range of proposals as well as contributing to discussions about larger programmatic goals. To learn more about proposing an exhibition or short-term project please visit our Proposals Page.

Mar 09

Open Call: Exhibitions + Main Spaces

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We are currently seeking proposals for Group Exhibitions in our gallery space, Solo Projects + Installations in our gallery space, and short-term Main Spaces Projects!

Review the guidelines for open calls for gallery exhibitions and projects in our main spaces, and apply by April 15! We are also accepting proposals on a rolling basis for Open Capacity – our space support program for artists and organizers.

Take a look at our proposal page for full details and guidelines.

Submit your proposal here.

Mar 07

Trap Karaoke

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TRAP Karaoke is about personal empowerment, cultural participation, cherished moments, community, and creating a safe space for human connection.

FAQs:

  • Wanna hit the stage?

We still have slots open. Sign up instructions will be provided via email 2 days before the event.

  • What is the refund policy?

No refunds, all sales are final.

LEGAL: As a condition of your attendance at “TRAP Karaoke,” you hereby grant TRAP Karaoke, LLC, it’s licensees, successors, and assigns the right, but not the obligation, to photograph and film you and use your likeness, voice and other sound effects in the production, exhibition, distribution, promotion, publicity and advertising of this event in any and all media throughout the world in perpetuity. With ticket purchase you agree to receive communications from TRAP Karaoke, LLC.

Mar 06

Horse Meat Disco

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Missed out on tickets? Try using our ticket exchange HERE powered by Lyte to safely and securely find tickets.

JWP Presents Horse Meat Disco New York

New York WorldPride 2019
WorldPride Weekend

Mar 06

Barbercon 2019

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Barbercon 2019 – Presented by BarberShopconnect

Barbercon is the premier global festival of the barbering community. Launched in 2016 by Lee Resnick as the live networking event for Barbershopconnect, the first social site exclusively for barbers, Barbercon brings together thousands of high-profile and amateur barbers, cosmetologists, and brands from around the world. 2019 will be the biggest and most dynamic Barbercon to date, 2 days and growing to include 3 stages for live hair tutorials and product demonstrations, an even larger Barbercon Marketplace, two full days of intimate education classes and workshops, an outdoor festival area, the prestigious Barbercon Awards, and so much more.

VIP Package:
– (1) 2-Day General Admission ticket
– (2) Guarantee Entry Education Classes
– Early entry (1.5 hours before General Admission doors)
– (1) VIP Barbercon gift bag with products
– On-site concierge
– (1) custom VIP laminate

Mar 06

Innervisions New York

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Innervisions will hold its first US event of the year in none other than the city that never sleeps, New York.

Dixon and Âme will be joined by some of the most exciting names in underground dance music: critically-acclaimed DJ Koze, fast-rising star Trikk and French talent, Jennifer Cardini.

Knockdown Center in Queens, a former factory with over a century of history and now transformed into an innovative arts and performance space, will play host to Innervisions for 8 hours of non stop music and dancing.

For more information about Innervisions:
www.facebook.com/innercityvisions
www.instagram.com/Innervisions_Official

Mar 05

Kuldeep Singh: THROUGH THE KALI-EROS

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Kuldeep Singh: THROUGH THE KĀLI-EROS, an evening of immersive performance.

Kali, the often misunderstood goddess of time, terror, destruction and protection is visualized here as a system of performative and sonic tropes equated to Eros.

Weaving together visual art elements with Indian classical dance gestures and theatre, multidisciplinary artist Kuldeep Singh and his collaborators present THROUGH THE KĀLI-EROS, an installation based performance project where meanings and boundaries are blurred through pathos and eros.

Against a hypnotic score drawn from Hindustani classical music layered with tones of prolonged echoed narrations in gibberish and live instrumental music, the work interlaces a myriad of haunting gestures and fluctuating movements as acts, interspersed with a film projected on suspended painted surfaces. These performance acts are fragmented in nature and unfold on cracked mud and dirt ground within Knockdown Centers large industrial space. Reflecting on a chapter in the 12th century Sanskrit tome Manasollasà that addresses the nature of dance, the work attends to realities of the post-colonial world through a relationship between abstraction and representation.

THROUGH THE KĀLI-EROS presents the viewer with a concocted world of its own, where hybrid meanings lead to an inner cleansing mechanism.

Collaborators include Jeffrey Grunthaner on guitar, Harsh Shah on sitar and vocals, and Russell Cole in movement.

About the artists
Kuldeep Singh is a multi-disciplinary artist with a compound artistic practice, comprising a system of non-linear narratives in visual art and multi-media performance. Through inventing situations in theatrical installations and hybrid myths, he surveys hiatuses in post-colonial histories. With his intensive, decade long training in the Indian classical dance form of Odissi (with critically acclaimed dancer Madhavi Mudgal, in New Delhi) he deconstructs components in movement and acting, sound/percussion mnemonics and spatial arrangements – all as re-arranged fragments in layers, engaging in body politics and social anthropology. The content transpires from eclectic stories across timelines, classic Sanskrit texts, and is layered to contemporary human situations – re emphasizing contemporary relevances.

Kuldeep is the recipient of some of the prestigious art residencies including: the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME (2014), Yaddo, NY (2015) and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, NE (2016); and has recently been artist in residence at Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn (2018) and at HH Art Spaces, Goa (2018) – on an award from Inlaks Foundation, Mumbai. He recently has been awarded the highly competitive New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2018), in interdisciplinary arts category. Kuldeep holds the National Freedom of Expression Award, Mumbai (2009, Infinity Films). His selected solo performances include at the Kolkata International Performance Festival (2014), Yaddo (2015) and Rapid Pulse International Performance Festival in Chicago (2016), La Mama Theater (2016), and most recently at Asia Society, NYC (2018) to name a few. His selected lectures & demonstrations include at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art – New Delhi, Queens Museum – NYC, Delhi University, University College London, University of Iowa, University of Nebraska-Omaha and Hunter College, NYC.

Russell Cole is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist. His works are often collaborative and improvisatory and explore the intersection of poetry, music, circus and dance. He holds an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College and has performed with The Commons Choir,Tori Lawrence & amp; Co., and recently at Triskelion’s Never Before, Never Again festival with Luther Bangert. He is co-founder of the art/literature magazine 叵CLIP.

Jeffrey Grunthaner is a writer, artist, musician, and curator based in Brooklyn. Their articles, reviews, poems, and essays have appeared via Drag City Books, BOMB, American Art Catalogues, The Brooklyn Rail, artnet News, Hyperallergic, and other venues. Recent curatorial projects include the reading and discussion series Conversations in Contemporary Poetics at Hauser & Wirth, New York City, and Daniel Turner; Drawings and Sculpture, at Spoonbill Studio, Brooklyn.

Harsh Shah is a pursuing a full fledge career as a Construction Manager in NYC. But his passion and yearning for instrumental sitar and Indian classical vocal music has pulled him for diversified collaborating experience with many other instrumentalists – including Indian flute, Violin and Veena and dancers. He is in training, past 4 years under the guidance of Indrojit Roy Chowdhury – one of the most talented young exponents of Rampur Senia Gharana. And also learning Hindustani vocal music. His recent most collaboration was at Queens Museum, NY.

About Residency Unlimited (RU)
Residency Unlimited (RU) supports the creative process and promotes exchange through its unique residency program and year-round public programs. Moving beyond the traditional studio model, RU forges strategic partnerships with collaborating institutions to offer flexible and customized residencies designed to meet the individual goals, needs and visions of local and international artists and curators. RU is particularly committed to promoting multidisciplinary practices and building lasting connections between residents and the broader arts community.

 

Photos courtesy of Zhiyuan Yang

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