What is my work about?
My work uses the built environment as a framework for sculpture and site-dependent installations that engage with the relational and associative possibilities of site and material. Recent works use the wedge, a “simple machine,” as form, reshaping past projects and unrealized ideas into “usefulness.” The wedge—traditionally used as shim in construction to make things “right” or to fill a gap; or as a ramp, a multiplier of forces—here redoubles—as allegory and recyclery. Site based works are analogous to this simple machine: An economy of procedures and materials produces a visibility of underlying histories and structure, leading into questions of body, ambition, and failure. A recent two-part public work, “In Advance of a Storm,” blends a Minimalist rule-based structure with a Pop psychology strategy; the responses of my parents (both architects) to a visualization exercise called The Cube Game locate and ground the “reasons” for the work and its appearance.
Artist Statement
My work uses the built environment as a framework for site‑dependent installations and sculpture, engaging with the relational and associative possibilities of material and place.
Recent sculptures have taken the wedge, a “simple machine,” as a formal container. The wedge shares its form with the shim, used in construction to make things “right” or fill a gap; and a ramp, a multiplier of forces; a set of linguistic and formal doublings which is also central to my making. Utilizing the leftover and auxiliary components of my studio practice: a piece of metal shelving, engineered stone, wood, encaustic paint, embroidery thread, polyester webbing—remainders of previous projects and unrealized ideas—materials are manipulated and reimagined into sculptures that—while utilitarian in form—are functionally useless. Stripped of their inherent possibility as raw material, the materials reanimate as homages to process in their existence as art objects. Operating in this relation to their own facture, these simultaneously allegorical and literal ‘tools’ are souvenirs of an attempt at finding direction and meaning through making.
My installation work is also legible through this conception of the machine: A tight economy of procedures produce a visibility of structures (historical and material) that bends the fact of the physical world into questions of intentionality, ambition, limit, and failure. Through simple interventions and correspondences, rooms become sculpture/objects with a set of specific properties, referents, and possibilities that can then be “re‐played” in iterations. This iterative logic is central to a piece like last year’s Site Set, where the room is translated—via the “facts” of its measurements and dimensions—into maneuverable material through the signification of referential color. This material (become analogue for the room itself) can be performed sculpturally over and over, allowing for plasticity itself to become a term of both the room and of the sculpture.
Another intervention, 86 Holes at Projekt722, in Brooklyn, used found holes in the gallery floor—made by the previous tenants with a drill bit so that water pooling from a leaking roof could travel through to the landlord’s space below— as the starting point for another layer of intervention and inventive “correction” to the space. I filled the 86 found holes with blue‑tinted wood putty, ostensibly “fixing” the original fix, but creating a new aesthetic mystery while doing so. The holes were translated to a scale “template” of holes in a sheet of paper, which can further be used to translate the interaction between site and occupants into yet another site. This body of work riffs off of the existing conditions of the site—found errors, dimensions, materials, and adjustments—to render the malleability and relationality of the built environment, and our relationship with it, more visible.
My most recent project (and most ambitious to date), In Advance of a Storm (for Luis and Antonia) (for A and L) (for parents) (for two)—currently installed on Fishers Island, NY—departs from the simple gestures of earlier work while engaging with very similar concerns. These sculptures, two modular wooden buildings 10’ square and situated askew on their bases at eye level so they can be viewed but not entered, realize descriptions made by my parents (both architects) in playing the Cube Game, a pop‐psychology self‐knowledge exercise. The Cube Game asks the participant to imagine and describe in relation to one another a cube, a ladder, a horse, flowers, and a storm. Each element or object represents an aspect of the participant’s relationships and self. Interpretation of the responses “reveals” the inner mind and spirit.
In Advance of a Storm continues my investigations in minimalist strategies of variation of form and rule‐making, while also engaging pop interests in the cultural readymade and symbolic association. It also speaks to concerns long present in my work: An interest in site and its history; the way in which architecture and structure get repurposed to contemporary ends and needs; the relational experience of place, space, and material; rule‐making (and bending) as a strategy for uncovering idealizations and uncertainty in our experience and expectations; and the transmission of memory, knowledge, and meaning through structure and material.
CV
Education
2011 Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture
2009 M.F.A. Rhode Island School of Design
2003 B.A. Yale University
Exhibitions
(solo)
2014
In Advance of a Storm | The Lighthouse Works, Public Art Fellowship, Fishers Island, NY
2012
Site Set | Luchsinger Gallery at Greenwich Academy, Greenwich, CT
For Closure (Outdoors, the Bronx) | Bronx River Arts Center (DOT UrbanArts Program) Bronx, NY
2010
Robert Moses, He Knows Us | flatbreadaffair, Brooklyn, NY
2004
Process to Present: Recent Work 2000-2003 | Anne Reid Gallery, Princeton, NJ
(group)
2013
Pavel Acosta, Livia Corona, Ignacio Lang, Gabriela Salazar | Sgorbati Projects, New York, NY
La Bienal 2013: Here Is Where We Jump | El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY
Middle Zone | Projekt722, Brooklyn, NY | Curator: Corydon Cowansage.
Building Materials | Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT | Organized by Lucas Blalock and Jim Hyde.
We Are Still Here: Art IN the Bronx | Armory Show Satellite, Bronx River Art Center at the Andrew Freeman Home, Bronx, NY
New York I Love You Sometimes | Classic Six, New York, NY | Organized by George Terry.
2012
Building Material | Control Room, Los Angeles, CA | Organized by Lucas Blalock.
Exhibit A | Calico Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
Let’s Keep It Together: Gabriela Salazar, Siobhan Landry, and Ben Janse | Coworkers Projects, New York, NY | Curator: Yulia Topichy.
Synaesthesia | Present Company, Brooklyn, NY | Curator: Chad Stayrook.
2011
Strength in Numbers | SCOPE Art Fair, Miami, FL
The Build Up | Fowler Arts Collective, Brooklyn, NY
Construction Sight | Artspace, New Haven, CT | Curators: Lindsay Miller, Ilana Harris Babou, and Nadia Westenburg.
Reformation 2011 | Former Skowhegan Jail, Skowhegan, ME | Curator: Michael Rocco Ruggiero.
Shells, Nests, and Corners | Meramec Art Gallery, St. Louis Community College, St. Louis, MO and Backspace, Peoria, IL | Curator: Ken Wood.
Year Zero | Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Queens, NY | Curator: Louise Barry.
Tompkins Projects West: Works on Paper | Dan Graham, Los Angeles, CA
2010
Keep the Home Fires Burning | Fowler Arts Collective, Brooklyn, NY
The Late Works: Christopher K. Ho & Kevin Zucker | The Fisher Press, Santa Fe, NM
The Drawing Show | Tompkins Projects, Brooklyn, NY
2009
East|West Artist Exchange | Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA | Curator: Christina Connett.
Geography of Imagination | Adam House Gallery, New York, NY | Curator: Phong Bui, Publisher of The Brooklyn Rail.
Interactive | Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
MFA Thesis Exhibition, Rhode Island School of Design | Rhode Island Convention Center, Providence, RI
Lather, Rinse, Repeat (as Desired) | Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence, RI
Dialogue: Bauhaus | Chace Center, RISD Museum, Providence, RI
2008
A Varied Terrain | Chace Center, RISD Museum, Providence, RI
Boston Young Contemporaries | Gallery 808, Boston, MA | Jurors: Jackie Gendel, Tom McGrath, and Roger White.
Grants, Fellowships, and Awards
2014
LMCC Workspace Residency | Lower Manhattan Cultural Council , New York, NY
The Lighthouse Works Residency and Public Art Fellowship, Fishers Island, NY
2013
Smack Mellon “Hot Picks”
2012
Yaddo Residency (Louise Bourgeois Residency for a Sculptor)
2011
Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture Grant | RISD, Skowhegan
2010
Studio LLC Participant | Jamaica Center for Learning and the Arts, Queens, NY
2009
MacDowell Colony Fellowship
Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency (Alternate), New York, NY
Award of Excellence | Rhode Island School of Design | Jurors: Mark Milloff and Norm Paris.
2008
Award of Excellence | Rhode Island School of Design | Juror: Ian Berry, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs and
Curator at The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.
2003
Berkeley College Arts Prize | Yale University
2002
Ellen Batell Stoeckel Fellowship | Yale Summer School of Art
2000 – 2003
Sudler Fund for the Creative and Performing Arts | Yale University
Curatorial
2013
Carousel | Travelling slide projector, ongoing series| Curated with Mary Choueiter.
2012
Optotype | 92Y Tribeca, New York, NY | Organized with Lucas Blalock and juried by Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial
Assistant at the Whitney Museum of Art.
2009
Lather, Rinse, Repeat (as Desired) | Sol Koffler Gallery | Organized with Elizabeth Ferrill.
2008
A Varied Terrain | Chace Center | RISD Museum
Organized the first student show in the new addition to the RISD Museum, with fellow students Martin Smick and Mayen Alcantara. Juror: Judith Tannenbaum, Curator of Contemporary Art, RISD Museum.
Bibliography
2013
Aletti, Vince. “Goings on About Town: Art | El Museo’s La Bienal 2013: Here Is Where We Jump,” The New Yorker, July 29.
Peña, Arthur. “Gabriela Salazar interviewed by Arthur Peña,” arthaps.com, June 15.
Kedmey, Karen. “Masks and Materials at El Museo,” artsy.net, October 13.
“Exhibitions: The Lookout,” Art in America (online) , August.
Cotter, Holland. “A Constellation of Identities, Winking and Shifting: Museo del Barrio’s ‘Bienal 2013’ Explores Self
and Origins,” The New York Times, June 13.
Ragatao, Gisele. “A Disco Ball Piñata and the KKK as Emerging Latino Art,” WNYC News [and radio broadcast], June 11.
Mainwaring, Madison. “A Gallery Undone: The role of the curator rethought on the Upper East Side,” Her Royal
Majesty, February 4.
2012
Wagley, Catherine. “Even Pressure,” LA Weekly, November 8.
Vartanian, Hrag. “GO Bushwick, Gowanus, and Greenpoint: Artapalooza,” hyperallergic.com, September 14.
Chavez, Holly Chen. “Practical Manual to Go! + Brooklyn Must See Studios,” bushwickdaily.com, September 6.
Figueroa, Xavier. “Triangle at the Square,” Bronx Art Guide, June 17.
Estevez, Martin. “Greenpoint Column, Doors to the Bronx,” Greenpointers.com, April 10.
Video article, “Artistic Comment on Housing Bubble Unveiled at West Farms Square Plaza,” NY1 News, April 9.
2011
Steinert, Hans. Video interview with curator Ken Wood, “Nests, Shells, and Corners [PART 1]”, The Montage, July 26.
Volner, Ian. “At Home With Moses: Robert Moses, He Knows Us,” The Architect’s Newspaper, February 15.
2010
Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, 2010 Studio LLC: Year Zero (catalog). Jamaica, NY.
Rebecca Pristoop, “Robert Moses, He Knows Us” (supplementary brochure), flatbreadaffair, Brooklyn, NY.
Prescott Trudeau, Art Within Reach: From the WPA to the Present, Children’s Museum for the Arts, New York, NY.
2009
Bill Van Siclen, “RISD graduate show embraces the new austerity,” The Providence Journal, May 21.
Publications
2013
The Theater of Abstraction: Patricia Treib at Wallspace | ArtCritical.com | December 12.
2010
Journal of Contemporary Aesthetics | www.contempaesthetics.org
“Another One Bites the Dust! Urban decay and demolition as a compressed and heightened experience of the sublime
ruin, and some ways in which this modern ruin has affected the use of the vernacular of the ruin in contemporary art.” Volume 8 (2010).
Color & Color Magazine | Invited Contributor | Black & White Issue
The Report, by Jessica Francis Kane | Endpaper artwork: Published by Graywolf Press, August 2010.
The Last Works: Christopher K. Ho and Kevin Zucker | Invited Contributor | The Fisher Press, Santa Fe, NM
2006
Lostwriters.net | Art Critic
“Aerosol and Glass: Graffiti and Dale Chihuly, Together at Last,” September 19. “Spanish Art is Sexy, Part 3: Felix
Gonzalez-Torres Makes a Cameo in El Barrio,” June 5. “Spanish Art is Sexy, Part 2: Sorolla and The Hispanic
Society,” May 18. “Spanish Art is Sexy, Part 1: An aged Goya keeps it up at the Frick,” April 30. “The Art of Existing
from A-Z,” April 10.
1999 – 2002
Yale Daily News Magazine | Art and Design Editor 2000 – 2002 | Staff 1999 – 2000
2001 – 2002
Berkeley-Saybrook College Literary Magazine | Co-Editor and Design Director
2002 Yale Literary Magazine | Cover Art Contributor, Contributor
Teaching
2013 – Now
The Grace Church School | New York, NY | Faculty, Visual Arts
2010 – 2013
Riverdale Country School | Bronx, NY | Faculty, Visual Arts
2007 – 2009
Rhode Island School of Design | Providence, RI
Instructor of Record | Mixed Media: Painting Without Paint
Teaching Assistant |Painting I and III, Issues in Contemporary Art History, “Roving Critic”
Visiting Artist Committee, Graduate Transition Committee
2005 – 2007
Greenwich Academy | Greenwich, CT | Keegan Fellow in the Arts, Faculty
2004 – 2005
Princeton Day School | Princeton, NJ | Art Intern
2014
University of Delaware | Visiting Artist (MFA Program)