Fawn Krieger, Experiment in Resistance 2, 21, 11, 34 & 28, 2017-2018, Fired clay, underglaze, concrete & pigment

Fawn Krieger
Soft Power

Curated by Paola Gallio

September 14 -October 14, 2018

 

Curated by Paola Gallio, SOFT POWER debuts Fawn Krieger’s newest body of work, Experiments in Resistance, begun following the U.S. Presidential inauguration of Donald J. Trump. 

In this series of sculptures, the artist presses fired clay slabs into ceramic troughs containing wet and dyed cement. The clay, under glazed in matte atomic era colors, is pressed at various depths and at different times in the cement’s drying time, enabling the artist to study a vocabulary of haptic pressure as well as the displacement caused from a soft collision between material bodies. Krieger’s Experiments explore the possibilities of a concrete archive of resistance, refusal, and displacement as it emerges from the body, and before it becomes connected to language, thoughts, belief systems, and conflict.

The exhibition also includes an installation from Krieger’s ongoing project, OUTFIT. This hand-made, modular, and practical work-wear line is informed by Cold War consumerism. Originally framed as a mail-order economy, OUTFIT is informed by East German and Soviet mail order catalogues, which the artist has been collecting for many years. OUTFIT is wearable theatre, designed for working bodies moving through urban spaces from morning to night.

The show’s title, SOFT POWER is a term historically used to describe a technique of implementing domestic goods as tools for political and cultural persuasion. The works in this show borrow this frame- work as a means to explore resistance —both physically and socially.

Fawn Krieger received her BFA from Parsons – The New School and her MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Art- forum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, NY Arts, Flash Art, and Texte zur Kunst. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Paola Gallio is an independent curator and one of the co-founders of Assembly Room.