This Exhibit is past. Visit our Exhibitions page for information on the current programming.
Sun Seekers
Artwork by Amy Khoshbin & Jennifer Khoshbin
April 17, 2021 – May 10, 2021.
Opening Reception April 17, 2021, 2 pm – 5 pm.
Gallery hours by appointment Friday-Sunday, Noon – 3 pm.
Sun Seekers promotes re-connection with the physical realm as a form of healing. Amy and Jennifer, a sister duo in the arts collective House of Trees, present a new series of sculptures and drawings meant to dissolve the heavy weight surrounding us during the pandemic into a greater awareness of the body, dismembering and remembering mythologies around healing and somatics.
Sun Seekers references the artists’ science fiction-meets-reality narrative about a group of people who spend most of their time indoors on screens while consuming flowers and wearing absurd anti-anxiety analog objects to reconnect their bodies to the natural world.
Watch the recording of our Zoom event with the artists and curator Katherine Gressel.
Enjoy this virtual tour slide show of the exhibition, photographed by Etienne Frossard
View each artist’s individual work below.
Sun Seekers featuring artists Amy and Jennifer Khoshbin, promotes re-connection with the physical realm as a form of healing. Amy and Jennifer, a sister duo in the arts collective House of Trees, present a new series of sculptures and drawings meant to dissolve the heavy weight surrounding us during the pandemic into a greater awareness of the body, dismembering and remembering mythologies around healing and somatics.
Sun Seekers references the artists’ science fiction-meets-reality narrative about a group of people who spend most of their time indoors on screens while consuming flowers and wearing absurd anti-anxiety analog objects to reconnect their bodies to the natural world. These ameliorative objects reflect natural light from the sun to undo the draining effect of blue screen light, help plants flourish in an inhospitable environment, and shine their light both inward and outward. The Sun Seekers travel around the city, finding shards of light to reflect and keep both themselves and those around them feeling human, warm and alive. The Sun Seekers mythology is inspired by the radical aesthetics and liberatory philosophies of Sun Ra and Audre Lorde that address the importance of healing, humor, creative resistance, and physical pleasure.
Amy’s sculptural series uses tactile materials like weighted blankets, pantyhose, felt, and eye masks to promote a sense of touch and intimacy. Sculptures like the Hugging Chair and Weighting to Exhale cape serve as artifacts from the world of the Sun Seekers while also intending to re-awaken the senses that are so often disregarded in our digital landscape. Jennifer’s intricate drawings, Pile Up #1 and #2, along with her botanical resin sculptures, evoke a return to the natural environment, and create a sense of surrealist nostalgia as an escape from our current world.
Sun Seekers builds upon our previous exhibition Against DOOM TV, a collaboration between Amy Khoshbin and Macon Reed that also tapped into the history of artists using the absurd and play to make imagining a just future more fun and radical. Responding to the tumultuous 2020 election season, the exhibition brought artists, activists, and candidates into experimental dialogue. Sun Seekers continues this exploration, containing some of Amy’s collages and dioramas from the previous exhibition that critique contemporary power structures, but encourages turning inward and activating imagination as essential to the restorative process post-election.
About the Artists:
Amy Khoshbin is an Iranian-American Brooklyn-based artist, activist, and educator. Her practice, as an artist and pedagogue, builds bridges between disparate communities to counteract fear with a collective sense of empowered radical acceptance. She pushes the formal and conceptual boundaries of artmaking to foster progressive social change through performance, social practice, video, rap music, installation, tattooing, teaching and writing. She has shown at venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Times Square Arts, Artpace, The High Line, Socrates Sculpture Park, VOLTA Art Fair, Leila Heller Gallery, Arsenal Contemporary, National Sawdust, BRIC Arts, and festivals such as River to River and South by Southwest. She has received residencies at spaces such as The Watermill Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Project for Empty Space, Anderson Ranch, and Banff Centre for the Arts. She has received a Franklin Furnace Fund and a Rema Hort Mann Artist Community Engagement Grant. Khoshbin received an MA from New York University in Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Film and Media Studies at University of Texas at Austin. She has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, House of Trees, Tina Barney, and poets Anne Carson and Bob Currie among others.
Jennifer Khoshbin is a San Antonio artist and curator. Her work often aims to present some fragment or detail of the story of human diversity and community, and the strength of the work comes from great attention to pictorial detail, which can be readily seen in her drawings, murals and installations. Jennifer’s work is meant for viewing at close range and explores ideas often through the lens of modern illustration. Khoshbin’s artistic practice interprets both personal and public identities through different forms of collaborative storytelling. The guiding inspiration in all her artwork is twofold: the public self and the private self. Her public works are created with a respect to the specific history of the site and its communities of settlers and wayfarers, past and present, human, plant, animal, and mineral. Whether creating intricate personal drawings or large-scale public art pieces, there exists a simple phrase, idea, or intricate story worth Telling. Jennifer has exhibited works in galleries and museums throughout the United States: Southwest School of Art and Craft, TX; Blue Star Contemporary, TX; Artpace, TX; The Watermill Center, NY; Rose and Radish Gallery, SF; Bellevue Arts Museum, WA; 360SEE, Chicago; and Tinlark Gallery in LA, among others. Her work has been published and written about widely and has appeared in Newsweek, Readymade, House Beautiful, Glamour, and in numerous art and craft books.
About the Curator: Katherine Gressel, the Old Stone House & Washington Park’s Contemporary Art Curator, is a New York‐based curator, artist, and writer focused on site‐specific art. She earned her BA in art from Yale and MA in arts administration from Columbia. Katherine’s previous exhibits dealing with such topics as income inequality, urban agriculture, and parks have been recognized by the New York Times, Time Out New York, Hyperallergic, News 12 Brooklyn, and DNAInfo. In addition to organizing eleven major exhibitions to date at the Old Stone House, Katherine has curated for FIGMENT, No Longer Empty, St. Francis College, and Brooklyn Historical Society, and was the 2016 NARS Foundation emerging curator. She was selected for the 2015 Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans. Katherine has written and presented on public and community art issues for Createquity, Americans for the Arts, and Public Art Dialogue, among others. Katherine also served as Programs Manager at Smack Mellon Gallery from 2010-2014, and has worked and consulted for diverse nonprofits.
Sun Seekers is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
