Cici Wu, Basket 1 (confusion and dream), 2018, dimensions variable
Looking into Spotless Rain
Curated by Yulia Topchiy
Featuring Dachal Choi, Emily Wang and Cici Wu
November 20, 2018 – January 19, 2019
Domesticity peaks during the full moon in its insomniac web. They can’t sleep, and no one else can either. The three neighbors meet and discuss their dreams while peeling off potatoes. A basket of individualistic desires, spiraling out of control, but ultimately, the mass moves as an ocean in sync to the moon and its cycles and splashes of arpeggiated feelings and incoming casino coins. Every day around 4 pm, they hear, floating through the corridor, the echoes of a man singing the same wistful goodbye song.
A key was passed onto a friend to their neighbor’s home. The nature of their relationship is part translation part transcription and, secretly, poetic license to intervene. What was a relationship of orbiting in small tokens of care, moon gazing and moon making, parties held and eventually dispersed… is also an act of observation and ritual, building a raw, crude, generous, temporary, material and hopeful sprouting neighbor-ship. Sleep patterns connect and seep through doorways.
– Dachal Choi, Emily Wang, and Cici Wu
Assembly Room is pleased to present Looking into Spotless Rain, a site-specific exhibition curated by Yulia Topchiy featuring three artists in the gallery’s main space. Topchiy invited these artists to make site-specific works around an idea they consider as “neighbor-ship” touching on their responsibilities to each other and their role in the community. Topchiy’s interest in collaborating with these artists also questions the role of Assembly Room in Chinatown and its support of artists in the area. How do art spaces function in the city in the fabric of their local environment? How do we make connections with and welcome one another? What responsibility do we have as a meeting and gathering place? What discoveries and conversations are possible in the duration of a space? We encourage you to join us in open, honest, and genuine dialogue as we chronicle and present the collaborative practice via conceptual works that occur through the duration of the show, drawings, and sculpture.
Dachal Choi is an artist born in Seoul, Korea. Through her visual practice and writing, she sews ambivalent values together to question instability and uncertainty within individuals and the societies of which they are members too. Her work has been exhibited at Para Site, Triangle Arts Association, Socrates Sculpture Park, and others.
Emily Wang is an artist and musician. Her work has been recently exhibited at YveYang Gallery, Practice Yonkers, and 80WSE. She performs under her solo project lima Rei and with the band Dies Smely around New York.
Cici Wu was born in Beijing and grew up in Hong Kong. Her work has been exhibited at 47 Canal, New York, Bonnevalle, Noisy-le-Sec, France, Para Site, Hong Kong, and others. She has been the co-organizer of an artist-run residency and exhibition space PRACTICE since 2015.
Yulia Topchiy is an independent curator and one of the co-founders of Assembly Room.
Workshops:
January 15, 2019
Workshop: Jewelry making workshop with local community led by artist Alice Yang in collaboration with Manny Cantor Center | Educational Alliance. The workshop is followed by a tour of the current Assembly Room exhibition led by curator, Yulia Topchiy.
January 5, 2019
Workshop: World Building with Powers of Ten organized by artist Alice Yang in collaboration with Seward Park Public Library and Assembly Room. In this workshop for teens and adults, Alice Yang reimagines social issues through fiction. The event is part of the public program for the exhibition Looking in the Spotless Rain curated by Yulia Topchiy.
Screening:
December 16, 2018
Film Screening: Negotiating Intergenerational Intimacy. This screening of seven short films is curated by Banyi Huang. The event is part of the public programming of the exhibition, Looking in the Spotless Rain, curated by Yulia Topchiy.
Performances:
January 19, 2019
Performance: Lima Rey Music Performance at Sidewalk Cellar. This special event is part of the public program for the exhibition, Looking in the Spotless Rain curated by Yulia Topchiy.
January 12, 2019
Performance: Eating Bitterness, a participatory food performance piece by artist Luke Luokun Cheng, curated by Banyi Huang. This special event is part of the public program for the exhibition, Looking in the Spotless Rain curated by Yulia Topchiy.
