Inclinations
Alyse Ronayne, Gabriela Vainsencher, Heather McKenna, Sara Mejia Kriendler, & Tim Simonds, curated by Jae Cho
12 July – 9 September, 2018

Exhibition

INCLINATIONS
Alyse Ronayne
Gabriela Vainsencher
Heather McKenna
Sara Mejia Kriendler
Tim Simonds

Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present Inclinations a group exhibition curated by Jae Cho. The summer show will feature works by Alyse Ronayne, Gabriela Vainsencher, Heather McKenna, Sara Mejia Kriendler, and Tim Simonds.

Inclinations aims to explore visual and cultural implications of the inclined. As the only animal to walk on two legs, human beings have imbued the straight and erect with platonic ideal and morality. Conversely, the inclined, reclined, and queered, are primal, passive, and connote a lack of agency. Unsurprisingly, this attribution is evident throughout art history. From the othered Odalisques to Barnett Newman’s Vir Herocius Sublimus ("Man, Heroic, and Sublime”) - a painting which features five perfectly vertical stripes, western art history reveals our inclination towards verticality. In her 2016 publication, "Inclinations", the Italian philosopher and art historian Adriana Cavarero explores the many facets of inclination found in art and culture and counters our societal obsession with rectitude. The five artists featured in this exhibition do the same.

Alyse Ronayne’s Floorscape covers and reshapes the gallery space. Made from oversized sheets of carpet pad, the fleshy, peach-colored rebond take on a figural quality becoming both space and subject.

Gabriela Vainsencher’s slumped porcelains, titled El Objeto Que Se Acuerda or Objects That Remember Themselves, are often the results of an intentional design flaw. The clay forms are imbalanced or made to be thinner at their base causing them to cave over and into themselves. Within the kiln, the defect animates and documents its own brief history.

Heather McKenna’s Light Paintings are close-ups of seemingly nothing. These ethereal gestures of light and shadow pass over disconnected and asymmetrical panels and remind us “every inclination turns outward, it leans out of the self”.

Sara Mejia Kriendler’s Standard Deviation features individually cast pillars planted along a grid formation. The pillars’ undulating heights resists the alignment of their isolated form.

Tim Simonds’s Bottles and Diaries of Routine Ghosts captures the artist’s management of gourd vines. The upturned home-grown rigging and detritus used to maintain the over-growth embodies a manic energy and the compromises of caring for the plants’ slow inclinations.

Artist Bio

ALYSE RONAYNE lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA in printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 and an MFA in painting from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College in 2015, where she was awarded the Elaine DeKooning Fellowship in Painting and a Teaching Fellowship in the Sculpture department. Her work has been exhibited locally and nationally and is held in both public and private collections. Her work has recently been exhibited at 321 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Jeff Bailey Gallery (Hudson, NY), the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery at Alfred University (Alfred, NY), Soloway (Brooklyn, NY), and the Leslie Lohman Museum (New York, NY). In 2016 Ronayne founded the roving curatorial project IN LIMBO, and was awarded an Engagement Grant by the Rema Hort Mann Foundation for the project’s continuation in 2018.

GABRIELA VAINSENCHER was born in Buenos Aires, raised in Tel Aviv, and currently lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from Hunter College in 2016. Past solo and two-person exhibitions include Hanina Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, France; Parker’s Box Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; NurtureArt, NY; and La Chambre Blanche, Québec City, Canada. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Bergamo Modern and Contemporary Art, Italy; Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway; Pierogi gallery, Brooklyn, NY, The Freies Museum, Berlin and The National Gallery of Saskatchewan, Canada. Residencies include Yaddo, The Atlantic Center for the Arts (USA), Triangle Arts Association (France), and La Chambre Blanche (Canada).

HEATHER MCKENNA lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute with highest honors and spent a term at the Glasgow School of Art. She had solo exhibitions at the Cooler Gallery, Three Four Three Four, and Java Projects in Brooklyn. Recently, she had group shows at Baer Gallery, WI, BAM Benefit Auction through Bridget Donahue, 99¢ Plus, Pratt Institute, and Peekskill Project VI, NY.

SARA MEJIA KRIENDLER is a Colombian American artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA at the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts, NY where she was the recipient of numerous grants and scholarships. Her work has been featured in solo-exhibitions at CP Projects Space, A.I.R Gallery, and Magazin 4, Austria. Other recent exhibition venues include The Chimney, El Museo Del Barrio, Unisex Gallery, BLAM Project, and SVA Gramercy Gallery, NY. Her work has been reviewed on Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Newsday, Brooklyn magazine, and Art Ravels.

TIM SIMONDS lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited internationally at project spaces, galleries and performance venues including Rond-Point Projects, Cathouse Funeral, Greene Naftali, Wilma Projects, Proxy, Knockdown Center, Cleopatra’s, and Sibiu International Theatre Festival. He has shared his writing through forums in conversation around food, architecture and performance, such as in Put an Egg on it and PIN-UP magazine, at Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, and at symposia at Pratt Institute (Embodying Cognition), Brown University (Performing Philosophy), and Princeton University (Performing Architecture). He received an MA in Performance Studies from Brown University and teaches between the Architecture, Fine Arts, and Humanities and Media Studies departments at Pratt Institute.