13 September – 31 October, 2024
Exhibition
Luba Drozd
…the end and the beginning
September 13 - October 31, 2024
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to announce …the end and the beginning, Luba Drozd’s first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition brings together site-specific sound, projected animation, and sculptural elements that generate a cohesive gallery-wide installation.
The end is stated first. Like a boulder in front of a cave entrance, a monumental steel slab marks the exit hovering impossibly a few inches above the floor. Further into the space, more steel forms emerge as if unfolding from another and from the space itself. Portions of wall and glass fragment the space again. With rhizomatic wire and metal stems connecting all structural tissue. Slivers of light move throughout the space casting as much shadow as illumination, unsettling one’s sense of arrest. And sounds reverberate throughout.
Drozd’s expansive installation utilizes the very materials that make up and inhabit the space (drywall, metal, light, and sound) to alter, dim, or amplify each component. The walls are raised, ceilings drop to the floor, cables pierce surfaces, and windows are obstructed and relocated. However, within this fractured world, all things touch another, and from that emerges unity as well as a throughline to navigate.
The displacement and mutation of spatial elements is transformative, not only for the structure itself but for the way in which the body moves and experiences it. The space is a body in constant metamorphosis, and the perception of its elements echo within us.
Drozd’s work consists of raw, minimally unaltered, material including steel sheets, steel rods, and drywall. Moving lights are black and white forms animated digitally and emitted from discreetly placed projectors. The sound components are all analog using small motors to vibrate various materials to produce sounds. Programming the motors to different speeds alters its frequency and volume.
Artist Bio
Luba Drozd (b. Lviv, Ukraine) is an installation artist working with site-specific sound, animation, and sculpture. Her pieces touch on the timelessness of the universe, the transformation of nature, and the shifting awareness of time and matter.
She is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Sharpe-Walentas Studio Residency, Bemis Sound Art Residency, NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, MacDowell Fellowship, Yaddo Residency, Millay Residency, Pioneer Works Technology Residency, and BRIC Media Arts Fellowship. Her installations have been commissioned and exhibited at institutions such as Smack Mellon, CPM, Dat Bolwerck, Hessel Museum of Art, and Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute and MFA from Bard College.