Eventual Artifact
Curated by Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori
Broadway Plaza between 43rd and 44th Streets
Collaborators Devra Freelander and Gracelee Lawrence blend their sculptural practices to deal with questions of late-capitalist excess, technological globalism, geological time, the implications of human impact, and the ubiquitous viscerality of touch. Freelander’s own work explores climate change and geology through an ecofeminist and millennial lens, while Lawrence’s practice explores the transfigurative space between physical and digital reality.
Eventual Artifact (2019) is a fantasy core sample of Times Square from the future. Its fluorescent strata are interspersed with 3D printed copper forms of imported fruits, hands, CDs, sneakers, Styrofoam cups, and other techno-capitalist artifacts. The sculpture explores society’s relationship to globalized capitalism through a personal and geological lens. The column’s cap is a 3D scan of a topographic sample of Manhattan bedrock in Central Park.
“We ask our viewers to question their value systems and reassess the importance of convenience in our Anthropogenic age, while recognizing that our individual role in climate change still pales in comparison to the power of corporations and industry. How can we activate our individual responsibility to stave off climate change, while acknowledging the larger systems in place that exponentially factor into the equation?”
— Devra Freelander and Gracelee Lawrence
Eventual Artifact is a new commission presented in partnership with SPRING/BREAK Art Show. From March 5–31, 2019, Times Square Arts and SPRING/BREAK Art Show will present Times Square Immersive, featuring four outdoor sculptures that blur reality and fantasy with delight and warning on the Broadway Plazas in Times Square.
Devra Freelander (born 1990, Suffern, NY) is a sculptor and video artist whose work explores geology and ecofeminism with a contemporary lens. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016, and her BA with honors in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2012. Freelander has participated in the Socrates Sculpture Park Annual (2017), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency (2016-2017), and the Arctic Circle Residency (2017). She is a founding member of feminist sculptor collective MATERIAL GIRLS, and is a recipient of the 2018 Women's Studio Workshop Studio Residency Grant and a 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. Freelander is represented by CIRCA Projects in Minneapolis, MN.
Gracelee Lawrence (born 1989, Sanford, NC) creates sculptures that explore the relationships between food, the body, and technology. She has attended seven residency programs in the U.S. and abroad in 2018. She spent 15 months as a Visiting Artist in the Multidisciplinary Department of Art at Chiang Mai University on a Luce Scholars Fellowship in 2016–2017. She completed her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 and graduated from Guilford College in 2011 as a Principled Problem Solving Scholar with an honors degree in sculpture. She is a cofounder of Pig & Pony, a longtime contributing writer for the International Sculpture Center Blog, and a founding member of the collective MATERIAL GIRLS. Lawrence 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 currently an artist in residence at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY.
Ambre Kelly is a multi-disciplinary artist and Andrew Gori is a writer and filmmaker. In their spare time, they collaborate together and have co-created projects like the curator-driven art fair SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the production house The They Co., the publishing house The Underground Library, and the co-operative domestic art collective BOYFRIENDGIRLFRIEND.
Photo courtesy of Walter Wlodarczyk for Times Square Arts.