DEFINING FORM / A GROUP SHOW OF SCULPTURE Curated by Indira Cesarine

EXHIBITING ARTISTS Alexandra Rubinstein, Andres Bardales, Ann Lewis, Arlene Rush, Barb Smith, Christina Massey, Colin Radcliffe, Daria Zhest, Desire Rebecca Moheb Zandi, Dévi Loftus, Elektra KB, Elizabeth Riley, Emily Elliott, Gracelee Lawrence, Hazy Mae, Indira Cesarine, Jackie Branson, Jamia Weir, Jasmine Murrell, Jen Dwyer, Jennifer Garcia, Jess De Wahls, Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong, Jonathan Rosen, Kuo-Chen (Kacy) Jung, Kate Hush, Kelsey Bennett, Laura Murray, Leah Gonzales, Lola Ogbara, Maia Radanovic, Manju Shandler, Marina Kuchinski, Meegan Barnes, Michael Wolf, Nicole Nadeau, Olga Rudenko, Rachel Marks, Rebecca Goyette, Ron Geibel, Ronald Gonzalez, Roxi Marsen, Sandra Erbacher, Sarah Hall, Sarah Maple, Seunghwui Koo, Shamona Stokes, Sophia Wallace, Stephanie Hanes, Storm Ascher, Suzanne Wright, Tatyana Murray, Touba Alipour, We-Are-Familia x Baang, Whitney Vangrin, Zac Hacmon

STATEMENT FROM CURATOR, INDIRA CESARINE “What is sculpture today? I invited artists of all genders and generations to present their most innovative 2 and 3-dimensional sculptures for consideration for DEFINING FORM. After reviewing more than 600 artworks, I selected sculptures by over 50 artists that reflect new tendencies in the art form. DEFINING FORM artists defy stereotypes with inventive works that tackle contemporary culture. Traditionally highly male dominated, I was inspired by the new wave of female sculptors making their mark with works engaging feminist narratives. The artworks in DEFINING FORM explode with new ideas, vibrant colors, and display a thoroughly modern sensibility through fearless explorations of the artists and unique usage of innovative materials ranging from fabric, plastic, and foam to re-purposed and found objects including chewing gum, trash and dirt. Recycled materials are celebrated along with works engaging new digital technologies. The exhibit displays works that are politically charged, contrasted with those full of satire and humor. In the investigation of new tendencies, I felt it was important to juxtapose figurative works with the abstract, new materials with the classics, creating an immersive exhibit that defines new trends in sculpture and contemporary constructs of the art form.” – Indira Cesarine

EXHIBITING ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES + STATEMENTS

Alexandra Rubinstein www.alexandrarubinstein.com Alexandra Rubinstein is a conceptual artist whose practice focuses on deconstructing patriarchy by making the personal political. She came to the United States from Russia when she was 9, and spent the magical years of puberty under the oppression of both cultures. Over time, she was able to reconcile the weight placed on her by society and has continued to explore themes of culture, gender, and body in her work. Rubinstein’s precisely rendered, vivid paintings use provocative subject matter and humor to engage the viewer while contemplating the deeper issues addressed in her work. ARTIST STATEMENT “Hammered II” is a wall-mounted bottle opener that depicts Jon Hamm’s face from his sex scene in the female-driven comedy Bridesmaids. This piece is part of a larger series of male-adorned bottle openers titled “Thirsty.” Using Jon’s face to decorate a functional object while eroticizing him further by placing the opener over his mouth, the paintings mimic the typical decorative use of the female form, exercise the heterosexual female gaze, and ultimately reverse the role of the woman from object to consumer. The title of the series - Thirsty - comes from contemporary slang used to describe the fervor of female desire and the surge in assertive attitudes, and is a direct result of increased financial independence. The opener’s function reflects the consumerism that also accompanies financial stability, as well as the increased alcohol consumption that results from more female-targeted advertisements.

Andres Bardales www.andresbardales.com Andres Felipe Bardales was born in Cali, Colombia. He later moved to Miami, Florida, U.S where he received his BFA from Florida International University. He works predominantly with paper to create complex sculptures and installations using origami techniques to incorporate the use of lines, repetition and geometric shapes. He is interested in exploring the meditative state acquired by this process and the relationship this has with the meaning of presence and time. His most recent installation also studies the relationship between structure, space and the viewer. Bardales has exhibited is several galleries and is part of numerous private collections. He currently lives and works in Miami. ARTIST STATEMENT My work consists of using an old paper folding technique known as origami to create the basis of the pieces. The use of lines, repetition, geometric shapes and patterns gives my work a structural and unique quality. I believe that the art of paper folding is spiritual and when sometimes surrounded by a world of chaos, I often find myself in a meditative state while transforming paper into these shapes. For this reason, the process is just as important as the final product. Being able to integrate origami into my art has allowed me to question what time really means. At times the repeated actions put me into a spiritual trance that grounds me and helps me find peace of mind- in a place where there is no past or future and it is all about the now and my relationship with the present moment. This artistic state gives me a good sense of self-awareness and allows me to bring diverse sources from my background, culture and life experiences into my work. Early on, my biggest struggle was to find a strategy that would allow me to introduce a variety of mediums to this technique. An important component in my works is the materials I choose. Each kind of paper has its own individual characteristic- recording history in every fold in a different manner. Vellum, for example, used in some of my compositions records even the subtlest movements. Its translucency gives the material a very minimal and pure impression. With the change of scale and placement, a sense of rhythm and movement could easily be achieved. Also important is the incorporation of recycled paper, newspaper, and old encyclopedias as one of the main materials in my compositions. Reusing the papers gives new life to these sources of information. Upon closer inspection, the audience can still read what is printed on the pages. The information that is contained in the materials is a major subject in my pieces, especially in an increasingly digital age where printed materials are slowly becoming obsolete. By transforming them in the work, they are given new relevance without losing the printed wealth of knowledge.

Ann Lewis www.annlew.is Ann Lewis (American, 1981) is best known for her politically charged and often uncommissioned takeovers of public space. As a multidisciplinary activist artist using painting, installation, and participatory performance she explores themes related to American identity, power structures, and justice. The work often incorporates repetition through graphic elements and a limited color palette. Concept-specific materials such as inmate jumpsuits, women’s underwear, and toe tags are used to convey ideas around social justice issues such as mass incarceration, women’s rights, and police brutality. In early 2014 the artist garnered national media attention when she installed an oversized police tape banner that read ‘GENTRIFICATION IN PROGRESS’ at the former graffiti mecca 5 Pointz in Queens, New York. Her work was exhibited at the White House in the fall of 2015 during the Obama Administration’s reflection on mass incarceration. Her work has been acquired by the New York Historical Society Museum and the US Library of Congress. Most recently she has been named a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute Residency for Equal Justice. ARTIST STATEMENT Define Progress is an ongoing project highlighting issues around the gentrification, corporatization, and displacement of our communities. This performance was done in an apartment building emptied for demolition to make way for a luxury condo. The kitchen in many homes is the space where families commune, where memories are made, and meals are shared. By destroying this space I wanted to reflect upon the destruction of these memories and experiences.

Arlene Rush www.arlenerush.com Arlene Rush, a New York City-based artist, has exhibited extensively in museums, universities, and galleries across the world. Most recently, her work appeared in AIPAD’s Photography Show; ANTE Magazine: “AIPAD Features Groundbreaking Work by Arlene Rush in Photography Collection of Joe Baio,” as well as Art on Paper with AHA Fine Art Gallery. In September 2018 Rush will be exhibiting her work in an international group exhibition “A New York State of Mind, Stories from unusual suspects”, curated by Elise Tak, at De Cacaofabriek in The Netherlands and “Overlap: Life Tapestries” curated by Vida Sabbaghi at Penn State, Robeson Gallery in PA. She has been the recipient of the Pat Hearn & Colin De Land Foundation Grant, and a residency to Barcelona, Spain from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists. For the last five years of Rush Art Gallery (no relations) she was on the artist advisory board of Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. ARTIST STATEMENT My practice is united by a common exploration of social and humanistic principles and values that I execute through the mediums of sculpture, new media, installations, and photo-based works. Beginning with an inquiry into our shared social and political environment, my interdisciplinary work investigates the development of an individual’s sense of self and the evolution of a shared consciousness. Here I explore issues surrounding women’s rights, gender and identity, and a concerted reaction to the changing political and social climate of our era.

Barb Smith www.barbarasmithart.com Barb Smith is a Queens-based artist born in Kokomo, Indiana. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Bard College. Her work encompasses a wide range of media, including photography, video, and sculpture, and invites reflection on one’s relationship to the material world as evinced by the tension between seeing, touching, and recalling. Solo exhibitions include Cup at 315 Gallery, Brooklyn; Strike-Slip at Páramo, Guadalajara, Mexico; Unexpired Time at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Mesa, Arizona; and Apperception at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Recent group exhibitions include the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; In Practice: Material Deviance, SculptureCenter, New York; Queens International, Queens Museum, New York; Blue Jean Baby, September, Hudson, New York; and It/Ego, Brennan & Griffin, New York. Smith was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture in 2011 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2012. Her writing has been featured in The Shawangunk Review, No, Dear magazine, The Saint Lucy, Makhzin, and The Brooklyn Rail. ARTIST STATEMENT For “All of the Seams of My Clothing,” Barb Smith took everything she was wearing on one day (a significant day) and removed all of the seams, thus rendering the clothing useless. The artist painstakingly removed everything that was holding it together, including shirt, pants and underwear. Each piece of string, no matter how small, was tied together into a single line and made into a center pull ball. The type of ball is important because a center pull ball is a form that people use in textiles to control and prepare thread or yarn to be made into something new. So, even in the complete taking apart of Smith’s clothing, her outer protective skin, her public identity...it is made into a form that allows a transformation to occur- it can be made into something new. The ball sits on top of a piece of resin coated paper that is skin like, and the thread from the ball extends down, gently tethering a small cast column made of expansion cement.

Christina Massey www.cmasseyart.com Christina Massey’s work has exhibited extensively in the NY metropolitan area in over a dozen solo exhibitions including with the Noyes Art Museum, Rush Arts Galleries, Brown University and within the Springbreak Art Fair in 2017, in addition to showing abroad in cities such as London, Toronto and Tokyo. She has won multiple awards for her work including most recently the SIP Fellowship at the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, a Puffin Foundation Grant, Mayer Foundation Grant and Merit Scholarship at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY. Massey’s work can be found in multiple private and public collections including the Janent Turner Museum and Credit Suisse. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. ARTIST STATEMENT

Nature has always been very influential in my work and acts as a hidden agenda and representative aspect in my otherwise abstract work. The preservation of our environment and appreciation for nature reveals itself through my choice of materials and form. Be that from recycled found or collected objects to vaguely aerial landscapes or organic shapes that can resemble bugs or floral pods. Each work asks the viewer to stretch their imagination and invites their curiosity in a struggle to identify their marks, engaging in the creative process through the act of exploration of the Art. I am very inspired by the societal need for labels and definition and strive to create work that is outside of easy explanation. In a world that wants quick sound bites, my work is complicated. There are no only multiple layers in the process of creating the work, but in the topics of conversation and conceptual ideas behind them. I am fascinated by that “in-between”, of refusing that easy label and definition. My work is somewhere in the middle of painting and sculpture, craft and fine art, masculine and feminine, even abstract and representational.

Colin Radcliffe www.colinjradcliffe.com Colin J. Radcliffe completed his BFA in Studio Art at Bard College in 2016. Radcliffe attended The Wassaic Project residency in 2016 and was invited back for a second residency with an attached immersive 3-person collaborative exhibition, ley lines, in 2017. Radcliffe has exhibited in Queer Eye Rococo at Naming Gallery, Linear Anagram curated by Christopher Stout at Satellite Art Show, EMBCL at Flux Factory, and Uninvited Guests (solo) at Temporary Storage Gallery in 2017. Radcliffe was awarded the Anna Jones Fellowship in 2015 from the Center of Spiritual Life at Bard College for queer spirituality in painting. Currently Radcliffe works as a curator at Temporary Storage Gallery at BFP Creative in Brooklyn, NY. ARTIST STATEMENT Love, Death, and Disease are all uninvited guests — you rarely expect or plan for them, and yet they appear without fail. These ceramic sculptures are the embodiments of past lovers, spirits of loved ones departed, and reflections of myself. Clay binds the spirit, entwining the spiritual-emotional with the physical, and gives my sentiments independence, agency, and freedom. Despite pain and trauma, these beings are set free through the act of their making and become playful and comforting. They take my heartbreak and betrayal in Love, loneliness and devastation in Death, and the agony and embarrassment of Disease.

Daria Zhest www.dariazhest.art Daria Zhest is an artist based in Moscow/ NYC, who works across medium to convey a specific concept to life. Her body of work is project specific, and a common thread of ideas is present throughout the body of work. Her practice is situated in the understanding of nature and surroundings, and in a hypothetical space. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Daria has graduated from Parsons the New School, and has been exhibiting in various exhibitions, and currently is continuing her practice with the use of digital spaces in the city. She is in a persistent conversation with curators and artists that challenge her ideas and views, allowing the movement of thought.

ARTIST STATEMENT I create complex multi-dimensional works that redefine space in the close vicinity physically, as well as metaphorically. The work ranges from digital C- Prints to physical sculptures, interactive installations, that are made on the computer using CGI software, programming software and video, an Open-source electronic prototyping platform Arduino, interactive installation, motion graphics, and particle systems that then can be output to the analogue world in different forms. The body of work is developed from sketch with use of prototypes that lead to a final result. Each concept of the piece is project-specific, but the overall theme stands in between existence and technology along with core concepts that fall behind the process of reproduction and the digital. I believe in algorithmic structures of existence: not only mathematical equations, that describe complex universal movements, but also personal motives of routine everyday life; all intricate possibilities and beyond can be defined by algorithmic means, broken down, and scrutinized. The method of extrapolating certain forms consists of pausing the algorithmic mechanism that I create. The continuity suggests the perpetual, but it breaks down into pieces and extracts a specific extent when it reaches its plateau in its precise movement (not metaphorical). Through my practice I am seeking a path to getting closer in with technology and to better understand our way of existence in correspondence to the mechanisms of a computer generated structure. The space around is essential for learning about self and distinguishing the self from the other. Big endless space is not necessarily lacking any borders. Endlessness is achieved through dimensions, and an access to its scale. One of the questions that I raise in my works is: What happens to the state of the original, when we attain the ability to create perfect replications? Is there any purpose in the original? And where the originality is maintained in the world of digital technology that is positioned in the remaining analog world. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “No_name” Bust is a sculpture depicting the chest, shoulders and head of a person, usually on a stand. Three-dimensional forms create a resemblance to the original. Bust is the most common type of sculptural portrait and refers to a round sculpture claiming position of authority, and high social standing. They are placed on pedestals that create a rupture between the viewer and the one depicted. Institutions have these busts on display surrounded by monumental architectural order and for a moment they become center of an epic throw-back scene. There is a strong sense of gesture this the bust as if it was in motion and then snapped to only showcase one frame of the animation. A stretched, pulled, crushed, warped dimension of space. Through these systematic processes of transmutation, the initial figure develops new lines and contours, positively and negatively curving surfaces and volumes, protrusions and deep recessing folds. The objects — genderless, race-less representations — derive their profiles from a deliberate manipulation of a blank simplified head through the computer. The core of creating a representation-less figure is to draw attention to the surrounding space. This is achieved through the prism of history of how the busts were used to represent dignity of a historically valuable individual of their time, and how that dignity and trust towards the figure was forced by authority through a prism of fear and wealth. These sculptures pose a big question mark around representative aspect of all combinations of this kind described above.

Desire Rebecca Moheb Zandi www.desiremohebzandi.com Artist Desire Moheb-Zandi was born in Berlin in 1990 from a Turkish mother and an Iranian father. At the age of 6 she moved to Adana, Turkey where she lived most of her childhood. In 2010 she moved in New York to pursue her studies at Parsons School of Design. She graduated in 2013, and currently resides and works in Brooklyn. Since a young age Desire has always been fascinated by textures and craftsmanship. Her curiosity with textiles started as a kid when she would see her grandmother weaving for hours at their home in Turkey. By weaving with unorthodox materials and techniques, Desire breaks the traditional role of women in society. Using textile art as a symbolic image allows her to examine the role of women in history and dive into matters such as gender and domesticity. To draw and express this antagonism in her work, Desire enjoys mixing noble fabrics such as wool with industrial materials like rubber and plastic. It is a way for her to break from traditional textile art techniques and provoke a wide range of emotions to the viewer. ARTIST STATEMENT This piece aligns with my need to challenge the traditional weaving methods. Playing with different material families is a way to transgress the classical weaving domestic culture and express a message of modernity. Giving a contemporary twist to an old fashion practice is my way to showcase my middle eastern roots with my western education. The rubber, plastic and PVC collide with the wool and cotton. The variation of shapes help me explore different depth and texture. It is a true representation of my work and my antagonistic identity.

Dévi Loftus www.deviloftus.com Dévi Loftus was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, PA. She received her MFA from Pratt Institute in 2018 and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2015. At four years old, Dévi named her childhood cat Velvet. Her affinity for soft forms, textures and fabrics continued into adulthood. Dévi received the Geraldine Putnam Clark Prize for Visual Arts in 2015 from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been on display at First Street Gallery, Pfizer, Barbara Walters Gallery and the Boiler. Dévi had her first solo show, Stitched Pixels, at Steuben Gallery at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2018. Currently, Dévi's work focuses on the intersection of craft and the digital world. ARTIST STATEMENT My work materializes digital information with crafting methods. I create low- resolution patterns by rearranging the existing digital code of a photograph. This interferes with the system of communication that allows the image to appear on a screen. After printing the shapes and colors onto fabric, I treat them as instructions for handling the textiles. Each piece is sewn using threads from the edges of the fabric. This process disrupts the construction of the fabric, mimicking the manipulation of the photograph. Sewn based on a grid structure, the fabric scrunches and folds in different ways. The results are soft, tangible sculptures informed by abstract digital components. I want to highlight the digital space that exists beyond our vision. Digital and material systems function simultaneously in the modern world. Digital signals expand through most physical barriers. Our understanding of “range” extends outside physical boundaries because we constantly test the limits of signals. The movement process of digital information or how it might manifest physically motivates my practice. I choose to situate the fabric objects in the sort of mundane spaces that easily get overlooked—a pole, a little nook just out of reach, or a ceiling hook off which nothing hangs. These places have become banal to the point that they appear invisible to the people who also inhabit the space. While we filter our attention of space, digital signals occupy space without differentiating. I place my objects in awkward spaces to mimic the ubiquitous nature of digital signals in a room.

Elektra KB www.elektrakb.com Elektra KB is a Colombian artist living and working in Brooklyn. KB graduated with an MFA from Hunter College in 2016 and a BFA in Visual and Critical Studies in 2012 from SVA. Her work has been written about in Artfcity and ARTnews among other publications. She was named the artist to watch by British newspaper The Independent. Her group shows have been reviewed in Artforum and she has been a guest speaker on visual culture and social media at NYU in 2016. She won a 2015 DAAD award to pursue a yearlong fellowship in Berlin at UDK. She shows internationally and her recent projects have included: “The Accidental Pursuit of the Stateless”; a solo show at BravinLee programs (NY), Moving Image (Istanbul), UP Gallery (Berlin) and “The Water Mirror” a curatorial project which premiered at SPRINGBREAK art fair (NY) in 2017. Her works have been recently acquired by the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art in China, The Fondation Pour l'art Contemporain Salomon and are held in numerous private collections. ARTIST STATEMENT Using disturbing details from my personal life, I pair objects with text, blurring the boundary between art and life. After suffering trauma from a relationship, I drafted with my therapist a letter of what had happened to me, and then I chose a paragraph, which I machine embroidered letter by letter on a white piece of fabric; speaking about emotional abuse tactics of power and control. I paired the letter with a box full of unwanted objects gifted or left behind by the ex. In question, who had previously texted me: “The Way I React to You is Unsettling”, as a way of crafting an apology, after an incident. Bringing in to the conversation what a lot of women had experienced. I touch on subjects such as: misogyny, when perpetrators pose as victims, oppression, chronic illness and invisibilization of abuse in queer relationships. My work always has elements of poker-faced humor such as the last part of the letter. Making allusion to pop culture phenomenona where entitlement and policing are in the front center, closing the letter with the hashtag #harrassmentharrypatty. Introducing in to the conversation tensions of privilege and inequality, where the power of entitlement is increasingly leading to policing and false accusations to exclude Latino immigrants from shared spaces, by developing hostile environments, as we see it increasingly happening, not only in public, but also in private. The private is, political.

Elizabeth Riley www.elizabethrileyprojects.com Elizabeth Riley’s work addresses questions concerning the complex and changing world we inhabit and our “mixed reality,” living between physical and digital/virtual contexts. A long time New Yorker, she graduated from Barnard College and received an MFA from

Hunter College. The artist’s video The Life of a City is being presented in the BRIC Garage Door Video Series in the Spring/Summer of 2018. In December 2017 the artist’s recent wall sculpture was on display in Excessive Frugality at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn. In April 2017 the site-specific participatory installation, City Remix, appeared in the exhibition Reconstruct at LIU (Long Island University) in Brooklyn, and in June 2017 the 20 x 20 ft installation, Paper Dragons, Brooklyn, which functions as a walk-in, physical video, appeared in Bigger Bolder Better at 470 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, sponsored by the arts organization Chashama. The artist has participated in numerous artist residencies at home and aboard, including the Soaring Gardens Artists Retreat, Laceyville Pennsylvania, 2018, the Heliker- LaHotan Residency in 2017, the I-Park Residency in 2015 and 2013, the Anderson Center Residency (supported by a grant from the Jerome Foundation), 2013, and the SIM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2011. She was awarded a BRIC Media Arts Fellowship in 2014. ARTIST STATEMENT I make installations, wall works, and tabletop cityscapes, using video, inkjet- printed video stills, paint on duralar, and found materials. My drive in my art is in looking through the video media shapes and structures I make, toward forming an embodiment of the present and future. As a mature artist a propelling motive has been in reaching beyond the limited roles provided for women and enforced by the social standards I encountered as a young woman. Another influence has been the raw and nurturing influence of the urban environment that's been my home as an adult, and speaks to me continually about our direction as a society. The use of digital materials places the work in the contemporary timeframe that is defined by our “mixed reality,” living between physical and digital/virtual contexts, and the work addresses this pressing context. Is the digital present the bells and whistles of an unchanged and familiar humanity, or does it define us and the future?

Emily Elliott www.emilyannelliott.com Emily Elliott was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. There she attended Columbus State University where she received her Bachelors in Fine Art in 2011, she then relocated to Tampa, Florida where she received her Master's in Fine Art at the University of South Florida in 2014. Upon graduating, she moved to Brooklyn New York to continue her education by working as studio assistant and fabricator. During this time she fell in love with the multi layered process of mold making, techniques which she applied as a professional mold maker later in Long Island City as well as in her own art practice. She has since relocated to Saint Louis, MO, following her passion for making art and teaching sculpture and three-dimensional design. Using casting materials and techniques as metaphors for society and the individual, her work poses questions about the seen and the unseen and the nature of viewing bodies. Elliott’s evocative works blur the designations of the body and mind, while implicating the figure as both victim and perpetrator. Her work has been exhibited in Saint Louis, Columbus, Tampa, and Miami. ARTIST STATEMENT My studio practice involves exploring the boundaries of figurative art and mold making, an avenue I’ve been exploring for the past 6 years. I have always enjoyed the psychology of how we as the viewers perceive figurative objects, in that we project our own ideas about human nature onto them. In my most recent work I have investigated how much of the figure is needed in order for the viewer to still have an emotional or psychological response to an object. By obscuring parts of the figure I negate certain expectations we often have in relation to the human form, such as presenting busts where the face is covered, or presenting a full figure where little is visible apart from hands and the lower legs. In doing this, my aim is to directly confront the viewer’s expectations and relationship with viewing both figurative art objects as well as people in general. I’ve been implementing experimental mold-making techniques and materials in order to explore these ideas. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Ennui,” “Agita” “Ennui” is a continuation of my Hidden Figure series of busts. I wanted to deconstruct the function of bust figures by obscuring the identity of the subject. In this particular piece I wanted to explore the exasperation and quiet vexation that I have felt in the post Trump Era. This piece is a self-portrait meant to express my at times inexplicable anxiety when it comes to daily life. “Agita” is the third busts in my series. This piece completely obscures the subject with a bag. Unlike the others there is no part of the subject's face visible. In this particular piece I wanted to explore ideas of voyeurism and consent. The bag has no indications of eyes or holes through which the subject can gaze back at the viewer. It's meant to have us question our own gaze and whether the bag is being used a mechanism for hiding from us or if it was placed without the subject's consent.

Gracelee Lawrence www.graceleelawrence.com In late 2017 Gracelee Lawrence returned from 15 months as a Visiting Artist in the Multidisciplinary Department of Art at Chiang Mai University on a Luce Scholars Fellowship. She completed her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and graduated from Guilford College as a Principled Problem Solving Scholar with an honors degree in Sculpture in 2011. She has recently shown work in the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, at Automat Collective in Philadelphia, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT. She is a co-founder of Pig & Pony, founder of the Virtual Studio Visit Network, a contributing writer for the International Sculpture Center Blog and a member of the collective MATERIAL GIRLS. In 2017 she had two solo exhibitions in Thailand and one in Pittsburgh, PA at Bunker Projects. Gracelee was a 2016- 17 Luce Scholars Fellow, a recipient of the 2015 UMLAUF Prize, 2013 Eyes Got It Prize, and the 2011-12 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant. She is an artist, writer, cook, traveler, macramé enthusiast, lifelong horsewoman, and Bagel Babe. ARTIST STATEMENT For the digitally tethered, life is at the intersection of the virtual and the physical. Experience is continually tempered through a stream of simultaneous meta- interactions, archives, extensions, and reflections of ‘experienced’ reality. The truncated and disembodied limbs, fruits, and food packaging parallel the fragmentation and compartmentalization encouraged in digital space by questioning literal and metaphorical touch, or even the sensation of closeness, between bodies. This work looks at the ways in which bodies are both gendered and metaphorically fragmented in terms of the linguistic and image-based correspondence between capitalist-driven material desires, physical sustenance, and the digital spaces we inhabit. Trained to process and refine fragments of the digital world, we recombine them into an almost infinite number of configurations in order to create the semblance of a whole. This work also fights to become whole through the translation and recombination of the digital and physical, the sculptures relying equally on digital fabrication and hand augmentation. They are the consequence of the separation between the digital and object-ness as a marriage of the two, a smoothed glimpse into the messy space between human touch and perception.

Hazy Mae www.hazymae.com One Tuesday a package was delivered to Hazy Mae, and when she opened it she found a cookie jar with a love letter inside it. She was instantly smitten- the size, the character, the utility- and one cookie jar quickly turned into a collection of a hundred. With all of the cookie jar characters around her, they began to show up in her work- in paintings, drawings and animated films. Then one day she decided that she wanted to make her own cookie jars, where she could keep the playful, curious, functional style- that she loved about the classic cookie jars she collected- and take a fresh approach with monochromatic design and sweet- dreamy characters. Hazy Mae's cookie jars are the stuff of fairy tales, whimsical and arresting, a bit frightening and wonderfully in-your-face. The cookie jar is such an American icon--so many conflicting meanings and references, dangerous and comforting all at once. Each having its own domestic mysteries.

Indira Cesarine www.indiracesarine.com Indira Cesarine is a multimedia artist who works with photography, video, painting, printmaking and sculpture. She is the founder of globally distributed publication “The Untitled Magazine” as well as owner of The Untitled Space art gallery, which highlights a curatorial of women in art. Her work as an artist has been featured internationally at many art galleries, museums and festivals, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Images Gallery, Mattatuck Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CICA Museum, French Embassy Cultural Center, Art Basel Miami, Cannes Film Festival and the International Festival Photo Mode to name a few. In 2014, her public art sculpture, “The Egg of Light” was exhibited at Rockefeller Center as part of the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt. Her work was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York for the annual “Take Home A Nude” Art Benefit in 2017. ARTIST STATEMENT “I identify as a female artist, and empowering feminist themes are often a point of departure for my multi-sensory series. My work questions the place of humanity in context with contemporary civilization and is often influenced by autobiographical content and women’s history at large. As a multi-disciplinarian artist I often work across several mediums and techniques to convey a rich and diverse narrative. I connect with thematic subject matter that engages a narrative of social discourse and art activism, which I find is best communicated through the intersection of many mediums juxtaposed such as photography, video, sculpture, painting and printmaking. Through my exhibitions and artwork, I challenge the status quo, as well as tackle stereotypes and double standards. I draw from historical narratives in an effort to create empowering artwork that can have an impact on the viewer, be a catalyst for change or provide insight into history which may have been overlooked. As an artist I find it is often more effective to communicate an idea or concept through visual and sensory explorations that can uniquely address the world we live in today.”

Jackie Branson www.jsbranson.com Jackie Branson grew up in northern New Jersey. She holds a BFA from the University of New Hampshire where she studied printmaking and drawing and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied printmaking, sculpture and digital media. She has studied art in the city of Perugia in central Italy, has held fellowships at Sculpture Space, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Millay Colony, and has received scholarships to the Vermont Studio Center and the Chautauqua Institute. Jackie primarily shows in the tri-state area and her work is held in a number of private collections. She lives and works in Pawling, New York. ARTIST STATEMENT My work is autobiographical in nature and examines notions of identity and protection through various forms of non-traditional armor. I use materials that are significant in my life in order to personalize my armor. I draw on my Armenian heritage and the importance of carpet, not only to Armenians, but to my own experience growing up. I use carpet to inspire through its patterns and shapes and consider it to be a symbol of identity, domesticity, femininity and security. I am equally drawn to saw blades for their own significance in my life and use them in the same way certain patterns and colors represent the weaver of a carpet. I bring these materials together to explore the idea of armor while transforming and playing with the characteristics, similar and different, inherent in these materials, from shapes and details to the masculine, feminine, hard or soft.

Jamia Weir www.jamiaweir.com Jamia Weir (b. 1981, Connecticut) is a multi-disciplinary artist-teacher who often playfully explores the chaos of waste and recyclable materials, both in her own work and with her K-4 artist-students. Jamia received an MA of Art Education from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014. Her thesis work about Arts Integration and Eco-Art Education was published in 2016 in the national journal Art Education, in an article entitled “The Way the Light Hits a Web,” consequently quoted in the U.S. Department of Education’s quarterly newsletter. She obtained a Fund For Teachers fellowship to attend The International Center For the Arts in Umbria, Italy also in 2016. Most recently, in 2017, Jamia became an artist-in- residence at the Vermont Studio Center, returning to the location of her undergraduate work. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. You can follow Jamia's latest artwork on her Instagram: @artgirlsy and the artwork of her students @lalalandkidart. ARTIST STATEMENT My current work explores the chaos of waste and recyclable materials through the use of traditional fiber art processes. With a palette consisting mostly of discarded plastic bags that have been collected, washed, dried, and cut into strips of “plarn” (plastic yarn) or fused together to create a thick fabric that can be sewn, I build fragmented characters as commentary on our contemporary society.

Jasmine Murrell www.jasminemurrell.com Jasmine Murrell is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist that employs several different mediums to create sculptures, painting, installations and films that blur the line between history and mythology. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally for the past decade, in venues such as Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MOMA, Bronx Museum AIM, African-American Museum of Art, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and The Whitney Museum. Her work has been published in the Art Forum, The New York Times, The Amsterdam News, Metro Times and Hyperallergic. ARTIST STATEMENT My process of appropriating and re-contextualizing materials into multiples, seeks, as its objective, to invoke questions about the nature of originality, authorship, authenticity, and uniqueness. Moreover, it reflects the multiplicity of historical constructs of things and places while exposing the disembodiment of the true self, acknowledging the body as collections of multiples beings that collectively create a constant subconscious voice. The intention of my work is to articulate the black emotional and spiritual body within modern dilemma’s related to psychic and existential annihilation. I am deeply devoted to abstraction and have an interdisciplinary practice that encompasses curating of objects and installation, painting, sculpture, weaving, photography, and sound. My work demonstrates the unstable and shifting nature of humanity and the inherent ability of all living things to age and transform. I’m interested in the sublime spirit that evolves out of oppressive conditions. I work with middle-aged to elderly people as my muse to critique ideals of beauty and tapping into the collective memory of the black body. My work utilizes throwaway materials and obsolete technologies to invoke a transformative experience around historical erasures. Exploring the multiplicity of things and the body which merging ideas of reality and mythology. Reference our unconscious associations around the body while critiquing the myth- making false conceptions around beauty and history. The works critique the limited perspectives of blackness and of marginalized communities. It functions as a contribution to a much larger narrative and understanding of culture as sublime resilience. There are so many political perspectives when the black body entered the frame in any medium. There is a certain history of exploitations and commodification of the black body in film media and even in contemporary art that I’m critiquing. In the western world, dirt is viewed as something that needs to be cleaned and eliminated, rather than celebrated as a substance that gives and sustains life. The pieces are gestures of hope in the midst of impossibility and devastation. My work is an expansion of the black body, which aims to cultivate this vast story of not only resilience but also resounding sublime vitality in the face of annihilation.

Jen Dwyer www.jen-dwyer.com Jen Dwyer grew up in the Bay Area, California. Dwyer attended University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and received dual degrees in Ceramics and Environmental Science. She has been awarded numerous grants, scholarships and fellowships, including the Pottery Center in Jingdezhen, China; Salem Art Works, in upstate New York; Trestle Gallery Residency program in Brooklyn; and Kala Arts Center in Berkeley, CA. Prior to starting graduate school, Dwyer was based in Brooklyn. She is currently completing her master’s degree program at University of Notre Dame, where she received a Full Fellowship and will graduate in Spring 2019. Inspired by the Bay Area clay scene at a young age, Dwyer has worked with ceramics for over a decade. Her current practice is centered around ceramics, with elements of painting and video. She has received numerous interviews and publications, including Create Magazine, Vogue, Hyperallergic, Newsweek, Vice, and I-D magazine, among others. Dwyer is one of the featured artists in the book “The New Age of Ceramics” published by Hannah Stouffer. Dwyer’s work centers on social and ecological concerns of our current time. When she is not making art she is dancing or doing hot yoga. ARTIST STATEMENT Jen Dwyer’s porcelain sculptures merge imagery from antiquity period with contemporary feminist themes and semiotics. Throughout her art practice, Dwyer engages with historical Western imagery that often purported grand ideals and philosophies about truth and beauty, albeit during times of extreme inequality and exclusion. Fascinated with the idea of uncertainty and the ways it leads to the fear of the unknown or fear of the other, she's interested in the ways personal and cultural vices and desire to control others or oneself plays out. Dwyer confronts this friction by infusing her female perspective upon porcelain sculptures that offer a remixed interpretation of utopia, escapism and denial.

We-Are-Familia x Baang (via Jennifer Garcia) www.we-are-familia.org WE-ARE-FAMILIA is a group of artists and designers from around the world that takes a collaborative approach to object making. From 2008–2011 we created 25 one-of-a-kind Keepsake Boxes, each containing a portfolio of artworks from WE-ARE-FAMILIA artists. Our debut exhibition was held at Colette in Paris. We have since exhibited at The Museum of Art and Design in New York and at the Fountain Art Fairs in Miami and New York. In 2011, we collaborated and exhibited with Danish furniture design company Fritz Hansen. Our works have been featured in such publications as Fast Company, Interior Design, Elle, Cool Hunting, Design Milk, Tokion and Design Sponge. Our newest body of work focuses on women and technology in collaboration with designer Jennifer Garcia and VR company BAANG. JENNIFER GARCIA is a multi-disciplinary designer whose work has been featured at the Museum of Art and Design, NYC and at the Museum of Design, Atlanta. She has directed national ad campaigns for corporations and charitable organizations, designed corporate identities, websites, store windows, clothing graphics, art catalogs as well as product and music packaging. In addition to her graphics work, she is Director of WE- ARE-FAMILIA, an art and design collective with over 50 members who exhibit internationally. Jennifer earned her Bachelor of Graphic Arts from School of Visual Arts, New York City (1998). BAANG is a NYC-based new media company run by artists Jane LaFarge Hamill and Maria Kozak. It was founded on mutual curiosity for imaginative experiences centered around truth, beauty, and social consciousness. BAANG has exhibited at Sotheby’s and SPRING/BREAK Art Show. ARTIST STATEMENT

As new technology continues to appear and disrupt our lives, the boundaries between others and ourselves are constantly being redrawn. Many technological advancements center around communication, making connections more accessible, fluid and frequent. Now that hyper connectivity is a given, one wonders if new technology has brought us closer together or if it has isolated us further into worlds that we’ve created for ourselves. Post-Millennials are the first generation that will have lived fully immersed in a high-tech world. For most very young Americans, Internet and technology are fully integrated into their daily lives. We-Are-Familia proudly presents their newest Keepsake Box, “Girl w/ iPad Mini”. The open-able 3D print alludes to the unexpected effects of growing up online, and the conspicuous link between connectivity and hyper-dependency. It also functions as a container for four digital video works by women artists examining how technology is redefining our sense of self.

Jess De Wahls www.jessdewahls.com Originally from Berlin, Jess de Wahls is now a bona fide lynch pin of the international textile art scene. She creates hand-sewn relief portraits and colorful Embroideries tackling issues such as Gender inequality, Misogyny and Objectification as well as the ever growing problem of textile waste in her prolific output. Her pieces are created from up cycled clothing, a technique for which she has coined the term 'Retex Sculpture'. Embracing recycling and reuse as well as a contemporary approach to embroidery are paramount to her practice. Her extensive body of work has been exhibited and sold internationally, featured online as well as in print and is rapidly gaining appreciation within and outside the Textile Art scene. In addition to her own practice, Jess acts as mentor to the finalists of the prestigious Hand & Lock London embroidery price. She also teaches embroidery classes in the UK and internationally. ARTIST STATEMENT I create my work predominantly to explore subjects that move, excite or enrage me. It has become my mouthpiece on social and cultural issues, helping me to communicate my thoughts, changing peoples’ perception about feminism and gender imbalances one stitch at a time.

Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong www.jocelynbraxtonarmstrong.com Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong is a ceramic artist whose sculptures and installations have a fresh sophistication and modern aesthetic that link fine art with craft. Ms. Armstrong’s talent has been recognized and her work critically acclaimed. She received an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism in 2008, and was granted prestigious Emerging Artist Awards from American Style Magazine in 2008, Ceramics Monthly in 2007, and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2005. Ms. Armstrong holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She currently lives in Westport and maintains a studio in Bridgeport, CT. ARTIST STATEMENT Gesture is what interests me. Body language is beguiling. Gesture naturally conveys movement and can be passive or submissive, playful or seductive, regal and proud. Gesture can tell a story. I am interested in the formal aspects of figurative sculpture, influenced by my earlier career in fashion photography, as well as the potential for narrative expression in my work. The subject matter I excavate is indicative of the times we live in, pertaining to women’s issues, feminism, climate change and gun violence. I often examine the dark side of human nature. I am the daughter of a fashion designer and the influence of sewing and pattern making is evident in the signature technique I developed to build my sculpture. Using porcelain, forms are thrown, cut apart, altered and reassembled using black slip. The surface is sponged smooth, dried, then sanded, to enhance the “stitched" effect of the scored black lines. I use these lines to an illustrative effect and sometimes the lines can express meaning. Some sculptures are methodically planned using photographs as my source material, while others flow spontaneously from within. I remain open-minded, responding to my materials and the evolution of the creative process, searching for the unexpected in a sculpture. Sometimes I explore abstract or biomorphic territory and vessels with roots in organic matter take on an expressive human quality. I delight in this ambiguity, this duality, and this transformation.

Jonathan Rosen www.jonathanrosen.com Jonathan Rosen is a visual artist who works with mixed-media collage and interactive digital technologies. Rosen received a B.A. from University of Florida and a M.S. from VCU Brandcenter for advertising – launching the next 10 years of his career as an award- winning advertising creative and commercial film director, while founding his new-breed hybrid agency/production company: Lucky Branded Entertainment. Needing a creative outlet, Rosen began making art and discovered his future calling. Since making art his full-time pursuit, he’s had exhibitions in NYC, Sydney, Taipei, Paris, Hong Kong and an upcoming show at the Power Long Museum in Shanghai. In addition to those cities, his work lives in collections in London, Mumbai and Toronto – including pieces in the permanent collections of The LiveStrong Foundation in Austin, Bloomingdales in NYC and Colette in Paris. Rosen is also the founder and CEO of Artsparkr, an art-tech startup that helps artists of all disciplines find sought after creative opportunities. After living overseas in London, Amsterdam and Sydney for most of his adult-life, Rosen pursues his passions in NYC, the city he was born. ARTIST STATEMENT Beginning his career as an advertising creative, Jonathan Rosen has long been interested in the power that words and visuals have over people. Now as a full- time artist, Rosen has traded the dreams he manufactured for consumers, to uncover the authentic desires that he himself and others keep hidden away. His signature series, I WANT, explores this through appropriation of everyday objects and pop-culture artifacts. The source material is collaged to large 48”x72” canvases and then words “I WANT...” are carved away, leaving the dream unfulfilled both conceptually and in structure. Just as every dream is unique, each work never uses the same material twice. These desires found in Rosen’s artworks can be both social and isolating, empty and excessive and make us feel hope or hopelessness in our pursuit of them. “I WANT TO BE PERFECT” takes on society’s (and our own) distorted lens of universal beauty through a fleshy mass of over 350 naked Barbie dolls, while “I WANT TO BE UNINHIBITED” attempts to unlock our sexual boundaries and neuroses through deflated vinyl sex dolls.

Kuo-Chen (Kacy) Jung www.kcjung.com Kuo-Chen (Kacy) Jung is a digital photography and mixed media artist who was born in Taiwan and currently lives in San Francisco. Before she began studying art at San Francisco Art Institute, she was a scientist studying cancer biology and received her master’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Driven by the desire to create her own expression, Kacy started a journey to pursue her dream of being an artist. Through photography, mixed media sculptures, and site-specific installations, she investigates the way identity is constructed and reassembled during the process of socialization. She believes that no one is immune to the influences of their surrounding environments, from close social groups such as relatives, friends to intangible superstructures such as culture and ideologies. By using her experience as a starting point, she analyzes the negotiation, interconnectedness, and the power dynamics that exist between the individual and society. Her works have been shown internationally including New York, North Carolina, California, and Taiwan. ARTIST STATEMENT In the work titled "21 Grams", the idea of “what was losing while trying to adapt oneself to the society" is discussed -- it is something not tangible but make us human being. The title was inspired by an old scientific study published in 1907 by Duncan MacDougall. In his research, the soul of a person weights 21 grams. Viewer's experiences are challenged by the twisted female portrait and water dripping effect from the coated resin over a piece of photo-fabric in this work. The pair of hands that wring the fabric were made from plaster - the material popularly used in the building construction to represent the whole structure of our society. They were also cast from my own hands to convey the concept that I am not only part of social pressure but also the one who allow the oppression to put on myself.

Kate Hush www.katehush.com Kate Hush appeared in New York City via train, has held an interest in wicked women from birth, and first touched neon lighting the year Karen Black was taken from us. She is a quiet woman, and doesn’t wish for you to know any more. ARTIST STATEMENT A good man may be hard to find, but a bad man is hard to blind. Layered, entangled, and stratified just right, this labyrinth of glass is the perfect web to catch a tricky fly. Tiers of graceful glass formed over flame and filled with pure red and blue gas, strung with wires and electricity, come together to buzz and flash - telling the classic story of a woman’s hard work disguising and revealing.

Kelsey Bennett www.kelseybennett.com Referred to by Vanity Fair as a “photographer specializing in the surreal,” Kelsey Bennett is noted for a style that depicts a “super-real life". Based in NYC her photography and fine art have been shown in solo and group shows in New York, LA, and London. She has contributed to Interview Magazine, Dazed, Polyester Zine, and VICE. Kelsey has curated exhibits with Spring Break Art Fair as well as an exhibit at the National Arts Club including over 30 artists. With her sister Rémy Bennett she recently co-directed a video series about female artists, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and will be showcased at Marfa Film Festival this summer. ARTIST STATEMENT Since I was a child I was afraid of spiders. Fascinated by why as an adult we hold onto a fear that makes no sense to the rational brain I wanted to work closely with an arachnid. The goal being to become comfortable with it's form, function, and ultimately develop an appreciation of the power it holds over me.

Laura Murray www.lauramurray.net Laura Murray was born and raised in Oklahoma City, OK. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2012. She has completed two residencies: the Oklahoma Summer Art Institute Residency in Oklahoma City, and the Snug Harbor Artist Residency Program in Staten Island. She is the recipient of several artist awards, including the Edward & Sally Van Lier Visual Artist Fellowship Grant and the 440 Gallery Choice Award. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including Postmasters Gallery (New York, NY); Concepto Hudson (Hudson, NY); Gallery 58 (Jersey City, NJ); the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKC, OK), and Galerist (Istanbul). Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, Dazed Magazine, The Nation, and Vice’s The Creators Project. She was a guest artist lecturer at Google headquarters NYC, and recently co- hosted a creative workshop at Hunter College with art-editor for the New Yorker, Françoise Mouly, and author, Nadja Spiegelman. She currently lives and works in New York, NY. ARTIST STATEMENT I am a multimedia artist who uses both natural and artificial materials to create tiny objects packed with social significance. I combine traditional mediums such as oils, watercolors, and graphite with organic materials such as dirt, hair, egg shells, and insects to make artworks that blur the line between painting, sculpture, and assemblage. Highly influenced by memories of growing up in the suburbs of Oklahoma City, my work often showcases evidence of aging human constructs. I pair images of cracked streets curbs, abandoned houses, and blind-covered windows with images of insects, animals, storms, and tornadoes. By juxtaposing found objects with carefully rendered images, I explore the tension between illusion and reality. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: "1, 13, 17 Years," "Curbside," and "Exuvia" “1, 13, 17 Years”: One of my ongoing projects – “1, 13, 17 Years” - centers on fascinating temporal insects known as cicadas, which inhabit specific isolated areas throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Buried underground for the majority of their lives, cicadas emerge for only a brief few weeks at the very end of their life cycles. A special species of cicada, known as the magicicada, waits underground an incredible 17 years, emerges in a swarm of billions, and dies a mere month after emerging. Magicicadas are one of the most fascinating insects on the planet, and perhaps the most misunderstood. Often being mistaken for locusts, magicicadas are treated by the unknowing public as pests. In reality cicadas are completely harmless to humans; they have no stingers, nor mouths to bite with, and they have hugely beneficial impacts on surrounding fauna. Bird, squirrel, mole, and fox populations thrive during the years after a cicada swarm. So much can happen in the 17 years between emergences. Forests can be leveled, factories built, generations born. Roads, sidewalks, and other features of civil infrastructure are impenetrable to emerging cicadas. Fluctuating temperatures are also throwing them off of their vital 17-year cycle. Each generation of cicada is smaller than the last. Of the 17 known "broods" of magicicadas, Brood XI and Brood XXI are already extinct. If human expansionism, pesticide usage, and climate change continue to go unchecked, one year there will be no emergences to witness, and no more cicada songs to hear. In an attempt to document the saga of these insects, every summer I hike in wooded areas around New York and collect hundreds of exoskeletons shed by the emerging cicadas. I paint each cicada skin a lustrous gold, emphasizing their increasing rarity, and use them for site-specific installations throughout New York City. The resulting installations pay homage to the fragility of nature and the life-to-death journey of these amazing creatures. “Curbside”: This work is a part of an ongoing series of wall-sculptures touching on the subject of human interaction with nature. With these sculptures I attempt to create a narrative for the viewer to scrutinize. Another important theme of this series is the use of recycled materials. Each work in the series utilizes discarded waste such as glass, gum, candy wrappers, bottle caps, etc. Many of these items I actually collected while hiking, so in a way each piece is also a testament to respecting our planet. "Exuvia": This is another iteration of my cicada series. I take some of the best cicada exoskeleton specimens and fill them with glitter, displaying them as precious jewelry and emphasizing their natural value and increasing rarity.

Leah Gonzales www.leahgonzalesart.com Leah Gonzales was born in Colorado, and currently resides in San Francisco, CA. She received her Masters in Fine Art from San Francisco Art Institute, and now is teaching ceramics at pottery studios throughput the Bay. Besides spending most of her time exploring the boundaries of clay and glaze, she also is an avid watercolor painter and stop-motion animator. As the Bay area is so fiscally difficult for artists, Leah co-founded Space Bar Art Collective, to create a community for emerging artists, musicians, and art- collectors to come together and support one-another. Exploring sensations daily: sight, touch, humor, and sound, is the fuel to her creative fire. ARTIST STATEMENT This group of ceramic sculpture is an exploration of the oddly satisfying. Darkly whimsical in outcome, every glaze firing per piece takes on a satiating experience (as is nature of ceramics). I draw much of my inspiration from the unreachable: nature, love, and the micro and macrocosmic. I am always seeking a shared human fascination with inexplicably satisfying experiences— physical, visual, tactile, etc. Constantly looking to display a myriad of textures, lusters, sheens, animations, and other guttural matter; I explore the sensations behind the works that physically trigger a phenomenological experience. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Feefers”

This piece is inspired by a cat named Ophelia who belonged to my former roommate. I morphed this cat figure with the herbivorous Triceratops to mimic an ancient monument, as a representation of empowered femininity, stuck in place and time. This hybrid lives on an estuary landscape, surrounded by my common motifs of the macro and microcosmic.

Lola Ogbara www.lolaogbara.com LOLA AYISHA OGBARA (interdisciplinary artist/ sculptor / arts administrator) born and raised in Chicago, Illinois holds many mediums under her belt, i.e.; painting, design, mixed media, clay, photography and illustration. In 2013 she received her Bachelor of Arts in Arts Entertainment & Media Management and will receive her MFA at Washington University St. Louis. She prides herself on bringing focus to the delicacy of the human form and chooses to explore the versatility of femininity within the Femme existence. In fall 2017, she help launch Artist in the Room, a collective of artists who host national traveling artists in hopes of connecting them to St. Louis while giving local emerging artists the opportunity to network. Lola is currently works in St. Louis, Missouri as a visual artist and staff member of Craft Alliance Center for Art + Design. ARTIST STATEMENT As an interdisciplinary artist, I pride myself on bringing focus to the delicacy of the human form. I choose to explore sexuality and body forms, specifically of the bodies of people of color. In particular, the versatility of femininity within Black Femme existence has streamlined my interest. Using clay as a material brings about a fragility that is needed in my ceramic sculpture. I celebrate vulnerability, often using my own body as a source of inspiration. I am most interested in social standards, body stereotypes, social observance, and education as it pertains to the body. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “I Ain't Never Been a Lady, It Was Never in my Plans” “A Good Day to be Black & Sexy” is a series of monumental statuesque abstract figures that represent a pinnacle in Black female sexuality. With elements of fantasy immersed in Black Femme culture, “A Good Day to be Black & Sexy” serves to help liberate the Black female body by creating an atmosphere that questions dangerousness surrounding Black female sexuality.

Maia Radanovic www.maiaradanovic.com Born in 1978. In Belgrade, Serbia In 2002 she received the scholarship for International Art School in Salzburg, Austria, class: “Public Interventions”, with artist/professor Alfredo Jaar. That specific part of education changed her whole perspective on understanding art, relationship between artist and the observer and the conceptual importance. The work she did in that school won an award for next year scholarship. So in 2003 she took a “Video Class” with artist/professor Elen Cantor. Those experiences directed her into doing several conceptual public art pieces later in Belgrade, Serbia and Cape Town, South Africa. Video class mixed with her interest for music into working as a VJ (live video jokey) for 10 years for various DJ events and festivals. Her first solo exhibition “Creatures” in 2004, was acclaimed as the exhibition of the year by several Serbian art magazines. In 2007 she received her MBA in Sculpture/Installation from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Fine Arts, professor Mrdjan Bajic. As a young teenager she experienced several illnesses that resulted into her hair loss. Confusion with growing up in a culture where being bold was considered as revolt and religion that taught how woman should wear a scarf in church to hide her hair, as hair is distracting others from pure thoughts; It all made an interesting base for her developing as a female and as an artist. And hair slowly became a light motive that shows up in her work almost as a discrete but distinct signature. Since 2011 she moved to Toronto, Canada. There she started a new chapter of more feminine works, playing and understanding the meanings and expectations of feminine roles through being married. In 2017 she moved to New York and started producing work that is more minimal but tends to provoke strong emotional trigger and seduces the observer to want to interact with it, touch it. She uses photography, drawing, sculpture, performance, installation, ready made objects and video. Her work has been exhibited in Austria, Italy, France, Romania, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, South Africa, Canada and US. She lives and works both in New York, US and Toronto, CA. ARTIST STATEMENT In my work I’m mostly focused on female roles - social expectations, boundaries, stereotypes and relationships, the meaning of female versus male. I like to explore narratives, fairy tale ideology, archetypal stories and assumed meaning patterns. I have a narrative approach, where I try to find a fine line between literal, almost banal, and minimal conceptual presentation, just to provoke that inner pathos/emotion. I like to call my sculptures “playful”. Playing with concept and with textures and shapes that activate tactile senses and recall an emotion. They are narratives of weather feminine or masculine shapes that we want to interact with/touch and play with. The main idea is to provoke inner almost organic reaction to the shapes and materials that are used. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Nesting” I wanted to create a narrative scene of a woman opening up and giving birth. Materials used were carefully picked to provoke the observer’s senses. I want the observer to want to touch everything like the balloon that represents the umbilical cord... The color of the used vinyl almost irritates with its too organic look and it’s discretely covered with resin in some places as if the process just happened and everything is still wet and sticky. The inside is coated with “royal blue” pigment. As much as its texture is specific and gives this warm velvety feeling it is just a free pigment literally sensitive to touch. If you do touch it, it leaves a distinct mark so you know “you are not supposed to touch it” and makes the whole process intimate and sacred.

Manju Shandler www.ManjuShandler.com Manju Shandler is a visual artist and theatre designer. The National September 11th Memorial & Museum recently exhibited 850 paintings from Manju Shandler's 3,000 piece painting installation, Gesture, in the exhibition Rendering The Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11 for a 16 month long exhibition. She has had solo shows at Brown University's Sarah Doyle Gallery for Feminist Art, The Hammond Museum, The Honfleur Gallery, The Governor’s Island Art Fair, The Bergdorf Goodman Store Windows and group shows at The Untitled Space, Denise Bibro Fine Art Gallery Ho, The ISE Cultural Foundation and throughout the US, Amsterdam, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong.

Shandler was selected as a NYFA Artist/Entrepreneur and received the University of Rhode Island’s Sea Grant for Visual Artists, The Art Asset Award from The ISE Cultural Foundation, and was selected for The Art Sprinter Award. Manju Shandler's Puppet/Costume Design has been featured at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, PS 122, The LABA Theatre and at Radio City Music Hall. She has received an Emmy Nomination, Innovative Theatre Award, a Jim Henson Foundation Grant and was an Emerging Artist at the Eugene O’Neill Puppetry Conference. In 2015 Shandler's production design of Cinderella and the Prince Who Slays the Magic Dragon made its fourth performance cycle at Avery Fisher Hall. She is one of the original sculptors of masks and puppetry for The Lion King on Broadway. Manju Shandler has a B.A. in Performing Visual Art from Bennington College (1995). ARTIST STATEMENT My narrative art houses symbolic references to our contemporary landscape. Building upon established storylines and fables my mixed media artworks create a richly layered reflection of our dense and complicated times. I am often fascinated with how humanity’s hunger for fuel shapes societies. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Sleeping Eagle 3” Sleeping Eagles is a new series of sculpture exploring the fable of nationalism embodied. Raptors are usually thought of as hunters, alert and masculine. These eagles are caught napping, their power apparent, but also inactive. Female Eagles are the larger of the two sexes, with a larger wingspan, and up to twice as heavy. They have a far larger capacity to seize a target. In this moment of female empowerment, as we are awakening, what goals will the sleeping eagles rise and focus on?

Meegan Barnes www.meeganbarnes.com Meegan is a Los Angeles based artist and sculptor with a unique and playful approach to empowering the female form. The sculptures straddle the line between art and craft by re-imagining iconic ancient artifacts through a lens heavily influenced by modern day pop culture. Her primary focus is voluptuous backsides sculpted in clay or cast in bronze. The politics of the derriere has become a 21st century phenomenon. Butts have become the focal point in contemporary female sexuality and have permeated the pop culture by way of celebrities, music lyrics and videos, social media, fashion, gym culture and surgical augmentation. Barnes taps into the present day butt obsession and muses on whether self-enhancement and exhibitionism are forms of feminine liberation. Meegan's long creative career in fashion and editorial in NYC combined with a very influential 4 months in Brazil have all led to her current body of work. She embraces the female figure and society's ongoing obsession for curves, immersing herself fully into creating dynamic works that encapsulated her interests in art, design and feminism. She has a BFA from CCA. She recently did a collaboration with Opening Ceremony and currently has a solo show at New Image Gallery In West Hollywood until July 14, 2018 Her work has also been featured in numerous group shows at galleries including The New Museum, New Image Art, Fifty24SF, The LodgeLA, Modern Eden, MAMA Gallery & Stephanie Chefas Gallery ...and in publications including Vice, Paper, Juxtapose and Paulette.

Michael Wolf www.michaelwolfsculpture.com Michael Wolf is a NYC area artist working primarily in sculpture and installation. Michael’s recent shows include a solo exhibition at the Sculptors Guild Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn, and Currently 80 at Westbeth Gallery that also includes work by Louise Nevelson and Chaim Gross. His most recent architectural installation was the inspiration for the exhibition Sanctuary at the Orlando Museum of Art. Other exhibition highlights include Guggenheim Museum curator Katherine Brinson selecting Michael’s work for an exhibition at the Viridian Gallery in Chelsea and internationally know sculptor Willie Cole choosing Wolf’s work for an exhibition at the George Segal Gallery. Wolf received individual fellowship grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the NJ State Council of the Arts. He received the Power of Art award, personally presented to him by Robert Rauschenberg, at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He has been an adjunct professor at William Paterson University and Kean University. ARTIST STATEMENT The themes I am investigating in my current work are the dichotomies of permanence and transience and sheltered vs. exposed. In these sculptures, I have been exploring archetypal forms of architectural structures and the sculptural possibilities of these forms. I have a renewed interest in minimalism but with a post-minimalist perspective in which content, location, and historical connections are important. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Amerika” “Amerika,” addresses the current political situation in the United States of America in which norms of behavior have been smashed by the president of the United States. The lead American flag is a metaphor for the toxic environment it has created.

Nicole Nadeau www.nicolenadeau.com American artist Nicole Nadeau is known for analyzing the process of establishing a ritual and its evolution. Her practice imitates a prescribed ceremony and procedure, with a system of collection and its evolution into the study of variety. Her perspective on identity is deeply influenced by her role as a fraternal twin. As a fraternal twin her role has been the outsider and the viewer with a heightened awareness to similarity and distinction. Through finding the variation in repetition, there is subconscious validation in the rituals she creates. Working with materials that are often overlooked and taken for granted. Magnifying the unexpected, and toying with the decomposition and evolution of both material and subject matter, she looks to investigate a diverse array of themes around human existence. Trained in industrial design, she has studied at Rochester Institute of Technology and Parsons. Her work blends manufactured and natural materials to create uncanny installations & sculptures. Nadeau’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Y Gallery, solo installation at Collective Design fair, group show at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and recently included in group shows at That That gallery, 11w 30 projects, & Christy's Art Center. Her work can be seen in The Whitney Museum & Brooklyn Museum shops. She will be at artist in residency this September at La Vallonea in Tuscany. ARTIST STATEMENT The funhouse is an amusement facility of temporary fun & curiosity in which patrons encounter and actively interact with mirrored devices designed to surprise and amuse the visitor. The Funhouse mirrors are participatory attractions, where visitors enter and move around under their own power. My work seeks to distort conventional perceptions and startle people with unstable and unpredictable physical circumstances within an atmosphere of spectacle. “Its not fun anymore” demands the viewer to reflect-what happens with the excess of spectacle? The mirrors are presented in the language of our everyday object. The vanity mirrors- medicine cabinets we use everyday that you would see in a basic American home. The artist uses the technique of fun house distorting mirrors and retro-fits them into our everyday language. When you take the spectacle home with you, it’s not fun anymore. It's actually becomes terrifying. Our everyday rituals and environment has been changed and effected in our current political landscape and presidency. The mirrors are to suggest our own hand in the surreal state of our world. We as viewers keep watching the spectacle, everyday tweets and refreshing our news apps updates. With higher ratings than ever before, media wants to keep us hooked & watching. We cannot leave the funhouse because we have taken it home with us and it has infiltrated our lives.

Olga Rudenko www.olgarudenko.com Olga Rudenko is a sculptor working in stone, wood and cement. Olga draws her inspiration from two archaic sculptural traditions. The first is of her native Ukraine, where Kurgan Stelae stand tall and strong against the flat landscape of steppe. The second is of remote Rapa Nui, where Moais spiritually and physically dominate island and its life. In her sculptures Olga Rudenko seeks laconic and emotionally powerful forms. Trained as a stone and wood carver by Seiji Saito, Olga approaches sculpting as a direct process of expressing her vision with deep connection to the physical media she uses. Olga explores in her art complexity of female identity through manipulations of volumes and lines, taking them from almost naturalistic and familiar to strange and unrecognizable. Olga sees the sculptural form as a combination of negative and positive volumes, their shadows and reflections and endless possibilities of their re-emergence. Light, shadows and reflections are physical part of her sculptures emphasizing shifting nature of human perception and memories. ARTIST STATEMENT “In Between” is a series of 15 reliefs that are a visual recreation of one particular memory. It is the same story re-remembered and re-reflected in 15 different ways with the same underlying form and essence. The actual memory is of a sunbather’s shadow, which I saw in 2009 on Zachary Taylor beach, Key West, FL. What struck me was that the shadow was much more pronounced and defined in volume and form than the actual physical woman. It stuck as one of the most powerful memories, which I constantly tried to recreate through stone and wood sculptures. It spoke to me as an allegory of my emotional, almost existential experience of something so powerful but existing only between the real, physical form and its metaphysical reflection as a memory. I also had a strong feeling that the memory was constantly changing every time I recalled it. I became interested in creating a series of work reflecting the underlying consistency in form and feeling, but constantly changing, reshaping and integrating foreign elements like my own and my daughter’s reflections.

Rachel Marks www.rachel-marks.com Rachel Marks is an American artist, performer and dancer living and working in Paris. Her background in dancing with the Oklahoma City Ballet transposes into her performances, using dance as an artistic medium in her work. She has a Bachelor of Fine Art (2010) in Drawing and Painting from Oklahoma State University and a Master of Fine Art (2013) from l’Ecole Supérieure d’Art et Design of Grenoble, France. Her works and performances are regularly shown in France as well as internationally. The Night of the Museums – Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, Imagine Science Film Festival-National Sawdust in New York, Gallery U10 in Belgrade, The Grand Palais in Paris, Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura in Tijuana, Gallery Gong in Seoul, SMOArts Bay Gallery in San Francisco, Bastille Design Center in Paris and many others. Rachel’s work has also been included in many publications such as the Highlike Book by SESI publishing house in Sao Paulo, Point Contemporain in Paris, Imago Mundi Contemporary Art Book and collection by Fondazione Luciao Benetton... ARTIST STATEMENT Rachel’s work looks at the relationship between nature and language by investigating identity and integration. Her practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and performance.

Rebecca Goyette www.rebogallery.com Rebecca Goyette is represented by Freight and Volume Gallery, NYC. She has exhibited internationally with solo shows at Freight and Volume, NYC, Spektrum: Art, Science and Community, Berlin, Germany, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ and Galerie X, Istanbul, Turkey and group shows/performances at the Museum of Sex, Whitney Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, Weisman Museum of Art, MN, Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC, Mulherin New York, NYC, Winkleman Gallery, NYC, Slag Gallery, NYC and Gallery Poulsen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work has been reviewed on Arte’s Cultural Program, “Tracks,” and in The Village Voice, Vice Magazine, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Playboy Magazine, Newsweek Magazine and Ms. Magazine amongst others. Goyette is also a lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art and has taught/lectured at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, Montclair University, Eyebeam and The New School. ARTIST STATEMENT Rebecca Goyette’s work embraces a fruitful multiplicity of sexual desire and engages a panoply of non- normative gender roles. Goyette transgresses fantasy gender boundaries with ease, as Judith Butler articulates there is no “single position within a fantasy; the identification is distributed among various elements of the scene.” For Goyette, sexuality is one gateway into the rich territory of psychology and human interaction, into the remotest ranges of the subconscious mind. Her work across media delves into complex characters based partially in the real (scientific fact, Puritan history, herstory, the annals of witchcraft, Goddess worship and the paranormal) and partially in fiction. Goyette recounts the psychosexual dramas of time immemorial in her “Ghost Bitch” Puritan historic reenactment/sexploitation films, while embodying the mating rituals of lobster in her extensive series of costumed Lobsta Pornos.

Ron Geibel www.rongeibel.com Ron Geibel (b.1985) received a BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and a MFA from the University of Montana. Geibel has exhibited his work in Canada and throughout the United States including the New York Ceramics and Glass Fair, NYC; Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston; and Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. He has been an artist in residence at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY; The Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY; and the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN. Ceramics Monthly Magazine recognized Geibel as an emerging artist in 2015. Currently, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX. ARTIST STATEMENT I explore the intersection of the public and private spheres and question our awareness of self and others. My conceptual framework stems from strategies co-opted by artists during the 1980’s AIDS epidemic. Their use of traditional mass marketing tools such as billboards, neon signs, and marquees permeated a familiar format to expose a poignant message. Colorful, candy-coated sweet treats and their irresistible deliciousness toy with the notion that temptation and desire allow us to yearn for what we do not even realize are present. I initiate a dialogue concerning sexuality, gender, and identity by crafting objects that are drenched in color and laced with playful humor that references the so- called, private parts of people’s lives.

Ronald Gonzalez www.ronaldgonzalezstudio.com Ronald Gonzalez is a contemporary figurative artist based in upstate New York. Since the mid seventies the artist has worked from his garage studio creating elegiac sculptures and installations that are embodiments of death and loss infused with grotesque narrative, and pathos. Gonzalez works primarily in a series with steel armatures and macabre collections of time worn objects, and detritus from his surroundings. The work is then further eroded with metal filings, burned wax, glue, wire, and black soot creating a dramatic tonal range that both obscures and reveals anthropomorphic heads, torsos and figures that appear as charred fetishistic mementos possessing a visceral quality imbued with a sense of primal energy and distress that permeates his work. His obsessive production of angst-ridden sculptures explore the emotive, social, and psychological associations of decaying found objects that function as autobiographical metaphors charged with potent and recurring symbols with childhood and nostalgic references. Gonzalez’s sculpture is mournful, confrontational, and estranged, standing on the border between human personage and doomed phantom. His restless investigation of animating materials has produced an art of dissolution with archaic, apocalyptic, and quasi-alien elements that convey an animistic mode of thought and intensely evocative expression of the human condition. ARTIST STATEMENT These works are simultaneously beings and things. The objects that I use have been ravaged by possession and memory. Like us, they have endured with all their marks of desolation. My work speaks to their pathos as part of what is common to all things. I am interested in melding objects with human forms to capture psychophysical energy invested with human presence. These works intertwine autobiographic elements with the material histories of my lifelong “found home “ in Binghamton NY. Where I work use both traditional and formal invention in brickolge fashion to remake it’s dated leftovers at hand in a process of dissolution and renewal. These heads are solitary and decaying personas still existing in this world set in their final place as imaginary beings of nostalgia, deformation, and mortality bearing witness to the ever-changing moments of art and life.

Roxi Marsen www.roximarsen.com In 1981, I spent seven months in Provincetown at the Fine Arts Work Center as a fellow. This gift of time and space gave me the opportunity to be an artist all day and every day. While there, I was chosen by Jack Tworkov to be in a prestigious exhibition at CDS Gallery in NYC. "Artists Choose Artists" was curated by Dore Ashton and included emerging artists chosen by other notable artists such as Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson and Isamu Noguchi. My career flourished with one person and group exhibitions. This good fortune led to critical and commercial success, including the 1987 "Working in Brooklyn" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, curated by Charlotta Kotik. My academic studies include an MFA from Pratt Institute, a BA from Trenton State College and a formative year at Bard College. I have received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and MacDowell Colony. Numerous professional credentials include solo and group exhibitions in and around NYC. ARTIST STATEMENT I am a rogue painter. A pastime of scavenging for interesting objects has radically evolved to another dimension. I have transitioned from a long loved world of painted surfaces to the construction of three-dimensional assemblages composed of found metal objects. My painterly sensibilities combine with an affinity for outsider art and I find myself “making things.” This process of putting together, taking apart, reconstructing, then figuring out how to make the elements stay requires new techniques of balance, sanding, drilling, wiring & epoxy. Stepping back to contemplate the next step remains as a constant. The work is three-dimensional although I do not identify as a traditional sculptor. My scavenging tendencies have accumulated a vast collection of materials. Second-hand shops, basements of aging hardware, cast offs left on stoops, street debris and donated objects contribute to the materials for these assemblages. These studio supplies allow me to cruise for the right shape and color. Repurposing rusty found metal objects is routine. My archival considerations are for the preservation of the patina of the manipulated metal. Nonetheless, the work is destined to evolve with age. My work has always been fueled by intuitive invention. Each artwork is a puzzle with some resolution, a moment when everything fits. A donated object central to the composition often helps generate a story. The narrative meaning is teased together by a title inspired by the objects themselves. The assemblages speak beyond the individual parts. The success is measured by all elements in conversation.

Sandra Erbacher www.sandraerbacher.com Sandra Erbacher is a German artist living and working in New Jersey and New York. She has degrees in Sociology and Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, London, and earned her BFA from Camberwell College of Art, London (2009) and her MFA from the

University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014). She is a current LMCC Workspace resident (2017- 18). Her work is included in the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection and numerous other private collections. ARTIST STATEMENT My interdisciplinary work, which includes sculpture, photography, installation, drawing, and sound, presents a critique of corporate bureaucracy. The objects and materials incorporated, such as office plants, furniture or carpeting, are typically found within the setting of the office space. In their institutional habitat, their sole purpose is to organize human activity, to maximize efficiency, maintain order and thus aid in the imposition of a hierarchical system of control. What happens though, if said objects refuse to conform to their standard mode of operation? In my photographs and installations, objects are stripped of their original function and activated through interventions, such as shifts in scale, material transformations, and re-contextualization. Installed in space, they mimic the clean, cold, minimalist language of corporate display. In their subtle gestures of non-conformity however, they deviate from business as usual and enter the gray area between defiance and failure, transgression and pathos. Instead of promoting an efficient workflow, their disruptiveness destabilizes any belief in the authority and inevitability of an otherwise unyielding, and oppressive bureaucratic system.

Sarah Maple www.sarahmaple.com Sarah Maple is an award winning visual artist known for her bold, brave, mischievous and occasionally controversial artworks that challenges notions of identity, religion and the status quo. Much of Maple's inspiration originates from being brought up as a Muslim, with parents of mixed religious and cultural backgrounds. She completed a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University in 2007 and in the same year won the '4 New Sensations' award for emerging artists, run by The Saatchi Gallery. "Sarah Maple’s artwork is unfailingly bold and brave, not for the coy or faint of heart. These unflinching, occasionally even controversial, investigations into what it is to be a woman and a Muslim in 21st century Britain are made joyful by her own very personal brand of boisterous, tongue-in-cheek humor. This is not sensationalism for sensationalism’s sake, but rather a heart felt urge by a twenty-seven-year old artist of great sincerity and talent, for the viewer to look again, and this time with a more questioning eye, at traditionally accepted notions of identity, gender, culture and religion." - Beverley Knowles 2012

Seunghwui Koo www.kooseunghwui.com Seunghwui Koo creates her works by drawing inspiration from the daily happenings and intricate moments of her life in New York City. Her work is a commentary on the lives of New Yorkers as she has witnessed. She was born in South Korea, where she first had the idea of combining the pig’s head and human body. The significance of the pig’s head lies in the different symbolic meanings from the Eastern and Western cultures. Good fortune (Eastern) and greed (Western), two very different connotations of the pig, are themes that are a part of her works. She uses resin, acrylic, plaster, clay, and mixed media to create her works.

Koo has shown her sculptural works in a number of exhibitions including Monmouth Museum, NJ, Belskie Museum of Art & Science, NJ, Newark Museum, NJ, Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY and Main Line Art Center, PA, among others. She is one of the artists in the Chashama organization in NYC. ARTIST STATEMENT When I was young, my parents owned a butcher shop. During that time, I saw a lot of butchered pigs. In Korea, when one opens a new business, buys a new car, or starts a big new endeavor, it is tradition to have a celebration with a pig's head in the center of the room while money is put into its mouth. The person then bows and prays for a good and comfortable life. There is also a belief that when one dreams of a pig, it is a precursor to material wealth. In Korean culture, people will buy lottery tickets and charms of pigs to compliment these beliefs and traditions. As an adult now living in the United States, I have experienced and observed many new cultural things. I have discovered there is a completely different connotation associated with the pig. The pig can also symbolize greed. This new world is a place where money rules, the distinction between good and evil is blurred, love and happiness are small things, philosophy has no place, and only material beauty matters. I have observed people curse the rich for having monetary wealth but at the same time be envious. In today’s competitive society everyone appears to be running to win a race but not realizing you cannot win away your loneliness when the people you have ignored or mistreated in your pursuit are not there for you at the finish line. My pig figures are symbolic of the different kinds of people I encounter in my own everyday race of a life. The bright colors and satiric images used on my terracotta clay and mixed media “Piggies” have been purposely used to create a whimsical urban vibe to my work but upon further inspection represent a deeper and sometimes critical commentary on today’s society with the end goal of connecting with the viewer to inspire thought, forgiveness, solace and hope.

Shamona Stokes www.shamonastokes.com Shamona Stokes, American b. 1980 in New Jersey, USA lives and works in Jersey City, NJ. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY (2002). Her ceramic sculptures explore the liminal worlds between wake & sleep and the archetypes of the subconscious mind. After beginning a meditation practice in 2016, Shamona was inspired to leave her successful career as a designer behind to pursue sculpture full-time. She is the great- granddaughter of Samuel Evans Stokes (Satyananda Stokes), a young American missionary who lived the life of a wandering monk in India before aiding the Indian people in their fight for independence against the British. Like her great-grandfather, meditation plays a big role in both her life and creative process. She presented her first body of ceramic work entitled “Hypnos” at Allouche Gallery, NY this past October as one of the regional semi-finalists in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series. Shamona also presented works at the Clio Art Fair (2018) during Armory Week and recently at the Superfine! Art Fair during Frieze Week. Last year she was chosen by guest curator Jodi Throckmorton of The Pennyslvania Academy of the Fine Arts for a solo show at the 20*20 Gallery (Lansdowne, PA) slated for 2020. Her work is a testament to the magical power of meditation to unravel deep- rooted creative blocks by tapping into imaginative worlds.

ARTIST STATEMENT In the limbo between the waking world and sleep, exists the land of Hypnos—a realm where nature spirits, imaginary friends, muses and shadow-things roam. Working primarily with clay, found objects, and soft sculpture, Shamona Stokes gives shape to a ceramic caravan of idols and totems that inhabit this dream world. Her sculptures are inspired by the quiet of meditation and the magic of imagination. Archetypes of the psyche, mythic characters, and symbols of the collective unconscious serve as guides in her exploration of the subconscious. She blends these elements together and what emerges are the playful re- imaginings of ancient and sacred things.

Sophia Wallace www.sophiawallace.com Sophia Wallace is an interdisciplinary artist with a BA in Political Science from Smith College and MA in Photography from New York University & The International Center of Photography. Her work is shown widely in the US and internationally including Spain, Austria, Mexico, Italy, Nigeria and the UK. Exhibitions of Wallace's art have been held at Kunsthalle Wien Museum, Samek Art Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Aperture Gallery, Taschen Gallery, Blueproject Foundation, and Newspace Center of Photography many others. Her works are in permanent collections of Agnes Scott College, Leslie- Lohman Museum and The Vescom Collection. Critical recognition of Wallace's work on female body knowledge includes the Atlantic, PBS, ARTE, The Guardian, Art in America, Teen Vogue, Time, VICE, and Huffington Post among others. She was a recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship, and has been honored with Griffin Museum’s Critic’s Pick, and PDN’s Curator Award. Presently, Wallace is completing a monograph of CLITERACY for 2019. ARTIST STATEMENT Every day, women hear language that dishonors their genitals and humiliates their sexuality. Common profanity, rife with gendered metaphors, makes it nearly impossible to curse without attacking the feminized body. In this landscape, sex has a clear winner and loser. The penetrator is always victorious over the penetrated. From her first sexual experience, our language specifies that a woman is reduced. She is "deflowered". The church is no safe harbor, with its embrace of the female on a condition of impossibility. The idealized woman must exist in a perpetual state of reproductive virginity. In this impossible paradigm of purity, female worth only depreciates in value with time, while masculinity gains currency with each sexual adventure and each year of experience. Language is made manifest in violence and often enacted through the genitals. The social stigma of rape from society is the second act of violence. Thus, a woman finds herself in a bind, unable to have sexuality without losing her honor, unable to inhabit her body without danger. In this context, it comes as no surprise that the true anatomy of the clitoris, was found in 1998, 29 years after a man walked on the moon. Indeed, one might say that the clitoris has yet to be discovered, as its complete form is unknown to almost everyone, including doctors. The clitoris is equivalent in scale to the penis. Like an iceberg, most of the organ is internal. Like the penis, the clitoris is comprised of erectile tissue and an abundance of nerves, 8000 in the glans alone as compared with 3000 in the glans of the penis. Indeed, the clitoris and the penis are homologous organs, both originating from the same embryonic tissue. The clitoris, not the vagina, is the female and sometimes trans masculine sexual organ.

All female mammals have a clitoris. It is the only organ that exists solely for pleasure. By the logic of nature, pleasure is the clitoris' function and evolutionarily mandate. If the phallic can function symbolically, so can the clitoris. As a signifier, the clitoris expresses a right to human thriving and those pursuits beyond mere survival: the arts, intellect, and pleasure. As a symbol, the clitoris upholds the dignity of those whose gender and sexuality has been weaponized against them, particularly women and queers. For this series of sculptures, I worked with clay, a primary medium of art. This material served as the perfect vessel to communicate a fundamental truth of nature.

Stephanie Hanes www.stephaniehanes.ca Stephanie E. Hanes was born in Alberta, Canada in 1985. In 2009 she received her BFA from The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, Canada. She is a recent MFA Graduate of Ceramics at the Rhode Island School Of Design in 2017 and received the prestigious Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship for a graduate student with exceptional promise. In the fall, she will be an Associate Professor in Ceramics at University of Washington in Seattle. Stephanie has exhibited Internationally with a solo show at C.R.E.T.A Rome Gallery in Italy and an upcoming solo exhibition with Lefebvre et Fils Gallery in Paris, France. Her ceramic sculptures have been exhibited in New York City, Providence, and Los Angeles. In Canada Stephanie has exhibited across the country and is publicly collected by Red Deer College in Alberta. Her artworks have been privately collected throughout France, Canada and the United States. ARTIST STATEMENT My work explores notions of the sacred and the profane, and the dualities of power with its relation to abjection. By deconstructing idioms of identity and reconstructing its relationship to violence, beauty and grotesqueness. I deliberately chose to leave my sculptures in a state of incompleteness, so that each fragment participates in the pulverization of past traditions that were traditionally upheld and valued. This artistic work is always in the process of emerging from or on the verge of slipping back into the material, resulting in a nonconformist figure that is opposed to the finished and polished. My work exhibits the cost of inhabiting the female body: it is an existential dilemma that deals in the real, which is not imagined feelings, but it is drawn from catharsis, from dramatic emotional experiences. Thus, articulating the difference between living in a female body and looking at it. The fragmented body has long been rooted in Surreal, in that these bodies shed skin, ooze, vertebrae protrude outside the flesh, arms and legs dissolve or have been broken off, but the fragments saved to exasperate the resistance to wholeness that she is denied. It speaks of the segmentation of the body and to the female body as the site of division. This strategy of unraveling feminine truths through mimicry of the ideal, to make the unseen visible, and ultimately disrupts this singular notion of a “correct femininity” that has both the potential for creativity and destruction.

Storm Ascher www.stormascher.com Storm Ascher just graduated this May from the School of Visual Arts, New York and gave the valedictory BFA commencement speech at the ceremony. She is a multi-media artist focused on public and private space, and the female form. Her work from the past two years consists of oil paintings of women of color naked in empty public spaces, and glass works of neon abstracted forms alluding to women's delicates. She is working on a documentary film dealing with the complex relationship between gentrification and art, which is currently being filmed in the heart of the gentrification and homelessness crisis in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. When she is not in the studio, she is curating exhibitions, interviewing luminaries within the art world, and writing art criticism. After completion of her documentary, Storm will pursue a Master's degree in the contemporary art market. She has exhibited in shows in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York and has been interviewed and featured by CBS New York. ARTIST STATEMENT Hang Your Delicates is a command; to exhibit your overlooked bits as works of art. All of my work calls for action, to publicly assert our right to determine our levels of privacy and engagement. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Hang Your Delicates (Red Bra)” Hang Your Delicates (Red Bra) is part of a series of abstract experimentations with neon glass tubing. Intersecting the surprisingly mundane interaction with a woman's dirty laundry with the attention seeking quality of a neon sign most commonly displayed in a business establishment window. One may think of a porn shop, yet an abstracted image reminiscent of a bralette denotes a more innocent side of the woman's hamper.

Suzanne Wright www.suzannewrightstudio.com Suzanne Wright is an artist and professor living and working in Los Angeles. She earned her BFA at Cooper Union & MFA at the University of California San Diego & also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been included in exhibitions at Stephen Friedman Gallery, Stefan Stux, Claire Oliver Gallery, Monya Rowe, Luis De Jesus Gallery, in Los Angeles. Her most recent solo show “Feminist Alchemy” is on view at Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles, Other recent exhibitions were at Commonwealth and Council called “The Rainbow Control Room” and Angel’s Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro. Her work can be seen in publications including Cock, Paper, Scissors, Feminist Landscapes, Strange Attractors, Armpit of the Mole and Art and Queer Culture (Phaidon, 2013). Wright has been an active member of various AIDS and LGBTQ organizations, including ACT UP/New York from 1989-1998. ARTIST STATEMENT Going through a tunnel or getting lost is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. New paths open while others are lost as the landscape of the journey changes. Visual openings are paths that carry us through an object or into the depths of a mass. Traditionally tunnels signify anxiety, danger, and darkness. My art & research practice is multifaceted. Being an active member of ACT UP/New York from 1989-1998 and many other art collectives - has profoundly shaped my understanding of the systemic nature of discrimination and oppression, as well as the ways in which art can be a tactic of resistance & enlightenment. For my most recent body of work, I researched the ‘secret architecture’ of Washington DC, and it’s hidden zodiac and cosmological symbolism. Using Google Earth to view the capital city from an aerial perspective, I have created an inverted, ‘feminized’ version of the city’s monuments, opening a dialogue that responds to those historically masculine symbols of power. One of the works called “Goddess Eye View” references the Washington Memorial, a giant obelisk which was inspired by the Egyptian obelisk ‘Tekhenu’, a phallic salutation to the sun god. Wright’s version sees the memorial topographically from above, transforming the masculine symbol into a universal one: the overlapping of two spheres to form a Vesica Piscis. I propose a contemporary feminist alchemy, forging alternative frames of reference with new perspectives that lead us to a re-vitalized kind of perception, equality, and empowerment.

Tatyana Murray www.tatyanamurray.com I first arrived in New York City some twenty years ago and was struck by the clear blue skies with its piercing light. Ever since that seminal moment luminosity and play on light has a significant role throughout the different mediums of the work. The work has been exhibited in New York City, London, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Cannes, Venice, Bahamas, California and Hamptons. ARTIST STATEMENT “STARRY NIGHT" is composed of mass-produced man made materials. I re-appropriate these materials and elevate them into the Art Work. There is a direct correlation with Impressionism (staples), Constructivism (duct tape, Broken Glass) and Drip Painting (cascading wires). The title comes from one of Van Gogh’s most iconic painting that was created while in the asylum. The light spirals in and out of control as the light reflects and refracts off the different materials. At the heart of this disorienting movement lies stillness and a space to contemplate.

Touba Alipour www.toubaalipour.com Touba Alipour is a New York City based artist and designer. She was born and raised in Iran. She holds a bachelor’s degree in interior design from American University in Dubai - where she was living at the time. She then continued her academic journey by pursuing her master’s degree in exhibition design at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. After working in the industry for some time, she decided to expand her set of skills and techniques by learning sculpture at National Academy Museum & School, which led her in to the art world. "My works are inspired by daily events and activities happening around the world. Topics of my installations vary from self-reflection and self-awareness to politics and social activism. My works focus on engaging the viewer in a thought provoking subject matter that will start a conversation. I have always been attracted to disruptive moments and believed in powerful experiences which encourage me to push boundaries as much as possible to identify and create rare experiences that allow people to escape the ordinary." ARTIST STATEMENT My works are inspired by daily events and activities happening around the world. Topics of my installations vary from self-reflection and self-awareness to politics and social activism. My works focus on engaging the viewer in a thought provoking subject matter that will start a conversation. I have always been attracted to disruptive moments and believed in powerful experiences, which encourage me to push boundaries as much as possible to identify and create rare experiences that allow people to escape the ordinary. Statement on artwork featured in DEFINING FORM: “Money “Talks”” "Money Talks" was inspired by the constant mass shootings that happen around the country by using assault rifles and it resembles the power of money over our lives.

Whitney Vangrin www.whitneyvangrin.com Whitney Vangrin is an artist based in New York working across mediums with an emphasis on performance and sculpture. Equal parts physical and psychological, both performance and sculpture highlight materiality, while making allusions to film, ritual, and structures of the body. In her sculpture wax, sand and dead dough simultaneously mix with industrial materials such as upholstery foam, cast rubber, and sheet latex. Her sculptures deal with fragmentation of the body and the metaphors surrounding imagery of the body in pieces. Her work questions perceptions of authenticity, and hinges upon a combination of anxiety, spirituality and the uncanny. ARTIST STATEMENT In Dupuytren’s Contracture the artist modeled her father’s hands in silicone rubber and encased them in a manner similar to the Technological Reliquaries of Paul Thek. Like Thek, whose “meat pieces” drew from the Catholic tradition of reliquaries that contained the relics of saints, the synthetic severed hand of the artist’s father is immortalized in this piece. The hand itself suffers from a condition known as Dupuytren's Contracture, in which the fingers form hard nodules under the skin and worsen over time until the fingers becoming permanently bent in a flexed position. The work illuminates the uncanny nature of a severed hand, and its ability to have autonomy and character outside the body as a whole. The disembodied hand is capable of acting as a portrait; familiar and unnerving, while also a celebration of ailment and abnormality.

Zac Hacmon www.zachacmon.com Zac Hacmon (born 1981 Holon, Israel) is an artist based in New York. He is a recipient of the Rita Glasser Fellowship Award, the UJA-Federation of New York’s Rose Biller Endowment Fund Award, Unesco Aschberg Scholarship. Recent exhibits include SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York, NY), LMAK Gallery (New York, NY), Petach Tikva Museum of Art (Israel), Meet Factory Gallery (Prague, Czech Republic), Artsonje Center (Seoul, South Korea). He has had residencies at the Salem Art Works (Salem, NY), MeetFactory Studio (Czech Republic), MMCA National Art Studio in Seoul (South Korea). Zac received an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Israel). Hacmon is a sculptor whose work investigates modes of control and the delineation of private and public spaces. With acts of construction and deconstruction Hacmon creates objects and fictional environments that allow him to manipulate social conventions. Hacmon’s recent works use ceramic tiles, stainless steel tubes, plexiglass and aluminum. ARTIST STATEMENT In my work I use architecture as a device and as a mediator, my work raises questions about falsified notions of home and citizenship. It creates a system of formal and conceptual elements that subverting one another as the familiar materials collapses into the obscure shapes of the architectural sculptures.