CCS BARD

Artists: Simon Fujiwara, Dawn Kasper

These are not obligations but I want to (a response in two parts) presents works by Simon Fujiwara and Dawn Kasper, artists whose performance-based works utilize personal storytelling as a way to complicate the staged museum environment. By pairing these projects, taken as two parts of a larger whole, the exhibition brings together disparate artistic practices that use theatrical strategies at the forefront of their investigations and position the everyday as a site of inquiry. In the video work of The Mirror Stage (2009-ongoing)performance, Simon Fujiwara restages the artist’s first encounter with an abstract expressionist painting near his hometown at the Tate St. Ives. Fujiwara recounts his unforgettable experience with the work, which led him to pursue a career as an artist and simultaneously reach the epiphany of his own sexual awakening. In the newly commissioned work, BECOME WHAT YOU ARE, Dawn Kasper performs a physical intervention in the gallery. With the aid of props, video, and musical equipment, Kasper transforms the space by creating a sound sculpture that investigates human consciousness. The gallery’s theatrical setting is activated through the energy of the environment, determined by the audience that enters the scene during the artist’s two performances. Remains from the opening performance on March 18th at 2:30 pm include a sculptural installation in the space. During the closing performance on April 10th at 5 pm, the residue of the installation is repurposed and recontextualized.

Both Fujiwara’s and Kasper’s works expose hidden realities in engaging with narrative structures and shifts in fictionalized characters and personae. Foregrounding questions around autobiography and fiction, the artists further complicate the exhibition scene of the CCS Bard Galleries and challenge the contours of their host institution. As such, their constructed tellings create new truths, ones which offer the audience an alternative frame through which to read the story.