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Mar 02

Alison O’Daniel – Room Tone

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An Art in General New Commission presented in collaboration with Knockdown Center. “Room Tone” refers to the moment on a film set when crew and actors pause in order for the sound mixer and boom operator to record room tone, the subtle location-specific sound present in every space. Weaving narrative between film segments and object-making, O’Daniel will create a layered and immersive installation. Based on collaborations with three contemporary composers, Steve Roden, Christine Sun Kim, and Ethan Frederick Greene, O’Daniel builds a visual, aural, and haptic vocabulary through varying levels of access to information such as color, sound, and storyline.

O’Daniel’s engagement with different mediums is a type of call-and-response, building upon and transforming the specific language of one onto another. Experimental and documentary film collapse and coincide with sculpture and installation, in a collaborative process that highlights the inevitable loss or re-creation of information as it passes through various channels. The presentation purposefully disables audience members’ normative perception of events and materials in order to present new modes of listening and seeing. Emphasizing subjects’ relationship to silence or unavailable sonic elements, Room Tone draws on O’Daniel’s own experience as a hard-of-hearing artist. The project’s form of exploded storytelling results in a performative arc that is less reliant on traditional script structure and more on physical choreography and collaboration. The audience is guided through narrative holes, unknowns, and missing parts in order to engage in a process of deep listening that aims to extend far beyond the aural realm.

Click here for the full press release and to learn more about Art in General.

Performance: The Deaf Club featuring Future Punx,
Wall, and ASL storytellers. Thursday, April 28, 7:30-11pm

Feb 20

Anna Mikhailovskaia & John Schacht

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Knockdown Center presents sculptural work by Anna Mikhailovskaia alongside works on paper by John Schacht. The pairing starts an unlikely dialogue where shared sensibilities and visual energies become apparent despite contrasts in the artists’ backgrounds.
 
This exhibition is the posthumous debut of John Schacht, a relatively unknown self-taught artist working primarily in Chicago until 1981 when he relocated to rural Iowa until his death in 2009. Schacht participated in the Chicago art scene during the 60’s and 70’s alongside the Chicago Imagists and the Hairy Who. On the periphery of that scene, Schacht’s work is similarly committed to a fantastical, vibrant, vulgar, and personal aesthetic. Like many of the Chicago Imagists, Schacht’s work was inspired by a home filled with trinkets and antiques.
 
Mikhailovskaia was born in Kiev, Ukraine, raised in Brooklyn, and has been working in Brooklyn since her 2007 MFA at RISD. In a different era of art-making than Schacht, Mikhailovskaia investigates sculpture and its relationship to installation, performance, painting and architecture. Her work is inspired by the sculptural work of Cy Twombly, the artist James Lee Byers, the Japanese movement Mono-ha as well as Brutalist Architecture. An artist, writer and curator, Mikhailovskaia has produced public sculpture at Fidelity Investment’s Certified Wildlife Habitat in Smithfield, RI and exhibits regularly around New York City.
 
Where Schacht’s intimate works on paper are flowing and organic, rawly emotional and indulgent, Mikhailovskaia’s sculptural works are concise and geometric, exuding efficiency and restraint. Schacht’s works are diaristic and explore sexuality. Mikhailovskaia’s works appear as architectural fragments or found objects, but reveal themselves as carefully crafted to challenge the viewer’s perception of weight and surface.
 
Both artists manifest a similar mystical quality through pattern and contrast. Schacht mixes abstract and representational imagery using decorative patterns and rich, saturated colors in a stream­-of­-consciousness style. Mikhailovskaia’s minimal color relationships are paired with intense and uneven textures, bold patterns, and extreme material experimentations.
 
This exhibition is a rare chance to see work by two under-recognized artists, one from a few decades ago and the other contemporary. In this odd juxtaposition, the viewer can wander between intimate and large-scale works to find unexpected similarities between two artists making sincere work.
Feb 15

Pysanka Egg Decorating

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Our annual all ages workshop!

The word pysanka is derived from the Ukrainian verb pysaty ‘to write’; we ‘write’ designs on the eggs. Nearly all Slavic peoples and those in the eastern Mediterranean area practiced this art in ancient times using beeswax and dyes to create tiny masterpieces of art but Ukrainian Easter Eggs from the more modern Christian era seem to be the ones best known. The symbols used in pysanka design are a blend of ancient pagan motifs with Christian elements.

A special tool called a kistka is used to melt the beeswax and write on the eggs. The kistka is the pen and the beeswax is the ink. Each successive color is waxed and dyed until the entire design is created on the surface of the egg. The wax is then removed, and your masterpiece is revealed!

Jan 04

Suspended Forest

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Artist Michael Neff brings Suspended Forest, a forest-filled room of discarded Christmas trees collected from the streets of Brooklyn, to Knockdown Center for the month of January.

Suspended Forest has been shown twice previously shown in an unauthorized, unused space under the BQE along Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg. Those installations were removed by the city within days. The exhibition at Knockdown Center, on view for a month and configured in a grid, allows for a much different experience, most importantly time for the trees to shed their needles into halos on the smooth concrete floor below. The subtle pine fragrance of the trees and the changing nature of the exhibition over time gives visitors an opportunity for quiet contemplation throughout the month.

 

Dec 08

Threaded Trajectory

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Artist and architectural designer Katie Shima brings Threaded Trajectory to J McDonald’s mobile art project A Way From Home. This installation is a model of an urban machine – a sprawling mechanical landscape laced together with networks of transportation. Made from interwoven layers of packing materials, the piece is inspired by the traces and trajectories of urbanization in the Anthropocene Era.

extended through January 10, weekends 2-6pm
Dec 01

Bloch Show

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Join us for the opening of the final stage in BLOCH‘s residency at Knockdown Center. This exhibition will open on Dec 12 (2-7:30pm) and 13 (2-5pm) with performances, and a conference as well as collected ephemera from it journey and video documents made along the way. The exhibition will remain on view Saturdays and Sundays from 2-6pm through January 10.

Saturday Dec 12: Exhibition opening & Performance
Works and collaborations by Ueli Alder, Sarah Cameron Sunde, Com&Com (Johannes M. Hedinger, Marcus Gossolt), Joshua Dumas, Brendan B. Gaffney, Bruno Jakob, Dan and Owen Jerome, Tom Koehler, Mark Patsfall, Guy Paulson, Lorelei Ramirez, Packet Biweekly, Marc Trachsler, Yangzi with Zhang Da, Marvin Youngman. Videos by Com&Com, Fabian Kaiser, Alex Reeves, Mehmet Salih Yildirim

Sound bath by Sarah Cameron Sunde and Joshua Dumas, 2 to 6pm
Qian with Yi Zhou and YiMin Miao, 6:30 to 7:30pm

 

Sunday, December 13: Conference & Performance
Panelists: Johannes M. Hedinger, Tom Koehler, Anne Luther, Sarah Cameron Sunde, Kay Turner, Claire Wood, and more to be announced. 2 to 4pm

This conference will discuss Bloch as a symbol of the possibility of, and invitation to, a participatory project. It is also a reflection on the concepts of social sculpture, postproduction and Open Work. Johannes Hedinger has invited speakers specialized in cultural studies, anthropology, folklore studies and various aspects of art and cultural production to debate the Bloch at the middle of its ten-year-journey.

The conference’s closing event will be the performance “In here and out there” by Bruno Jakob (Invisible Paintings) and Hans Witschi (Piano: Dontforgets 1983-2015). 4 to 5pm

 

More information about the project: http://bloch23781.com

Nov 13

Pancake Feed

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Please join us for a Thanksgiving warm up that draws a line between two of our outdoor temporary projects, A Way From Home (J McDonald’s mobile art project that questions urban development) and Bloch (a 100 year old Swiss log come social art project). The trailer, adorned by a sauce dispenser, will serve as the assembly line wherein diners will then sit around the log whose presence is undeniable.

Don’t be confused. Come hungry.

…For chefs of all skill levels, preparing a Thanksgiving meal is a daunting task. A good meal is measured on a shifty scale of tradition, textures, and good timing. Everything is expected to arrive at the table hot, somehow from a single oven. The pressure is on to meet the formal expectations of each dish: moist and crisp, fluffed and weighty, pre-fabricated and made from scratch. And then, once set loose upon the offerings at hand, the diners inevitably assemble an exquisite mess and fall asleep, dreaming of tomorrow’s cold leftovers.
 
There’s nothing in the oven. There isn’t even an oven. Pancakes will be stacked and embellished with foams. Witness condiment pumps and slides for service. The cat door is open. The pressure is off, and the forms will surprise, but the flavors will surely deliver that deep-seated Thanksgiving feeling you look forward to all year.
 
Do not be confused. Do come hungry. Special thanks to Tim Simonds.
Nov 13

Ray Smith Studios Chicken Shit Bingo

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Ray Smith Studios Chicken Shit Bingo

Destiny hides in the depths of Ray Smith Studio’s incredible prophetic chickens. Saturday night, it will be revealed when J McDonald’s A Way From Home trailer hosts Ray Smith Studio’s Chicken Shit Bingo, with master of ceremonies Eamon Monaghan. $3 for a chance to win an original Ray Smith sculpture, and glimpse the future. Who will the all knowing chicken shit choose?

Nov 13

Private Nationalism

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Private Nationalism: Pressing Issues in Central European Contemporary Video Art

Video screening and panel discussion
Co-presented by Edit András, Ilona Németh, Viera Levitt, the Clakula-Gauthier Art production and Magdalena Moskalewicz

Including the work of Tibor Horváth, László Nagyvári Nosek, Csaba Nemes, Bálint Szombathy (Hungary) /András Cséfalvay, Matej Kaminský, Ilona Németh, Martin Piaček, Tomáš Rafa, Mark Ther, Matej Vakula (Czech Republic and Slovakia /C.T Jasper. And Joanna Malinowska (Polish Pavilion of the Venice Biennial, 2015)

Private Nationalism Project initiated by Approach Art Association, Pécs (project leader (Rita Varga) took place as an exhibition series at arts venues throughout Central Europe and beyond. Using visual artworks, discussions, and publications, the project directed attention to the urgency of totalizing nationalist developments of the former Soviet bloc by shedding light on overlooked issues of the daily life, and the subtle processes by which ideologies infiltrate and are absorbed into the citizenry.

Knockdown Center hosts a screening and discussion generated from this expansive project that involved the work of many curators and artists as it traveled and changed shape in each city: Budapest, Bratislava, Dresden, Krakow, Košice, Prague.

The presentation is divided into 3 parts focusing on Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Each screening section will be followed by a 15min discussion.

  • Hungarian part will be presented by Edit András (Hungary/USA, art historian)
  • Czech and Slovak part will be presented by Ilona Németh (Slovakia, artist), Matej Vakula (Slovakia/USA, artist) and Viera Levitt (Slovakia/USA, UMass Dartmouth Gallery Director)
  • Polish part will be presented by Magdalena Moskalewicz (Poland/USA, art historian and curator)

Supported by Trust of Mutual Understanding, NY

Nov 10

With and For

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With and For features three dual- or multi-vocal, call-and-response-like performances. Based on a dialogic framework, the program foregrounds various formations of intimacy – partnership, family, and friendship—setting the stage for polyphonic interplay in the form of song (recorded, performed, improvised), script, and theatre in translation.

Featuring Charity Coleman, Malik Gaines and Alex Segade, and Jordan Lord and Arias Abbruzzi Davis
Curated by Rachel Valinsky
Presented in collaboration with NYPAC

Arias Abbruzzi Davis and Jordan Lord: Ideas of Reference
Arias Abbruzzi Davis and Jordan Lord met six years ago in an intermediate French class. They became friends after collaborating on the final class project—an assignment to demonstrate mastery of the imperfect past tense, the future, and the future anterior. Their project was a short piece of absurdist theater about a jellyfish and rabbit. Returning to the script for the first time since their friendship began, they will perform a live translation of the script from French to English, remembering and speculating on the coded intimacies once exchanged.

Charity Coleman: Forever My Heart and Rebirth
Charity Coleman performs communion with the living voice of her mother, channeled through recordings from childhood and present-day conversation.

Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade: Choir Practice
Gaines, Segade and friends form an amateur choir singing from the repertoire of anti-racist, feminist activist, vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock. The audience joins in to sing protest songs, folk songs, spirituals, and blues. Choir Practice was first performed in 2013, during Gaines and Segade’s Courtesy the Artists residency at Recess Art, New York.

Above Image: Charity Coleman, 2015

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