Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Jump Cut, comprised of five individual exhibitions by Njideka Akunyili, Matthias Bitzer, Björn Braun, N. Dash and Dan Shaw-Town, each artist occupying one room in the townhouse. Jump Cut takes its title from an editing technique pioneered by the French New Wave filmmaker Jean Luc Godard in his 1960 film, "Breathless." By rupturing with traditional continuity editing in favor of splicing together multiple angles of the same shot sequence, Godard was able to redirect his viewer's emotional attention and understanding of the plot line. This set of shows looks at the ways in which artists distinctly mark time and frame source material in non-sequential formats, attempting to process and organize today's constant inundation of disparate images and information through varying intentions and techniques.
On the parlor floor, Njideka Akunyili marries urban imagery from modern-day Nigeria and the contemporary West, bridging cultural and formal gaps to create a cohesive, yet tension-filled whole. In her room, Akunyili lays down highly patterned collage with an agitated perspective, reminiscent of Vuillard's characteristically disorienting interiors, which she juxtaposes with mono-tonal self-portraiture. Effectively challenging a traditionally colorful rhetoric, Akunyili reveals a new, multivalent vision.
One flight up, four nests occupy Björn Braun’s room, each spun by birds in his studio out of a selection of materials: natural fibers, feathers, leather, cord, paper, left by the artist—an articulation of the symbiotic relationship of nature and culture. Braun navigates the pictorial territory by embracing both the [re]appropriation of objects that have their own nature and the [re]construction of his own “nature.”
In the facing room, Dan Shaw-Town's installation presents a divide between animate existence and physical process. Three horizontal metal rails flank the room, two mounted to the floor and one directly on to the wall in front of a painting, disrupting the viewing plane. Ironed newsprint layers obscure the painting's surface, alluding to a veiled interrogation of information and creative substance. The transfer of image and text appearing as an obfuscated memory melded with the material surface.
On the top floor, Matthias Bitzer’s kaleidoscopic mixed media panels reveal a collision of abstraction and representation. The images themselves are sectioned off in a display of cultural and geometric plurality. Of the included artists, Bitzer perhaps most directly applies the concept of non-linear time, effortlessly flowing between literary, historical, mythological, mystical, cosmic and present realities. His layered constructions investigating questions of authenticity and identity.
Also occupying the top floor is the work of N. Dash whose hybrid constructions dissolve the divide between painting and sculpture. Derived from a movement based process, Dash's works evolve through repetitive folding, crumpling and draping of gessoed and pigmented jute, string and wood, creating a refined aura of meditation both in process and the resulting object.
A catalogue will be published to accompany this exhibition, edited by Nicola Trezzi and available at the gallery.