October 13 – November 2, 2016
inCube Arts
314 W 52nd St, # 1, New York, New York 10019

InCube Arts and NARS Foundation are pleased to present Source Material, an exhibition that brings together the work of five NARS alumni: Sandra Erbacher, Cecilia Jansson, Euyoung Hong, Christine Rebhuhn and Alisha Wessler.

The artists in this exhibition condense different sources of material, functions, and associations into a singular object or image that serves as a further source of information, sensory modalities and affect. Subtly altered readymades or compositions of organic, ephemeral, or synthetic materials – often contradictory or abstract – that are part object, part sculpture occupy an indeterminate space between the real and artificial. By interrupting, reconfiguring or mashing up the function and meaning of everyday things, such as say a hockey helmet and freezer build up, in the case of Christine Rebhuhn, or a hand-dryer and on-hold music in Sandra Erbacher’s, the artists, more than posit their material and ontological status in relation to industry, design and commodification, let the materiality mediate a visceral experience of unease and suspension.

The uncanny feeling these objects embody or arouse, from recognizing the familiar as strange and suggestive, are differentiated by distinct material and conceptual approaches. Cecilia Jansson’s sculpture composed of porcelain and bread is a disturbing hybrid of refinement and the crude in an exoskeleton body. Alisha Wessler’s ghoulish masks of found objects and manipulated materials carry the psychic and physical emotive quality effigies imbued with folk-magic or morbid commemorative death masks. Euyoung Hong’s work looks at the places of others, corners, peripheries, which are frequently overlooked, abandoned and disappearing, and reproduces this sense of marginalization in the gallery space, encapsulating the anxiety that foregrounds the exhibition.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sandra Erbacher is a German artist living and working in Providence, RI. She has earned her BFA from Camberwell College of Art, London (2009) and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014). She has exhibited nationally and internationally, at Spring/Break, NYC, Grin Providence, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Mana Contemporary Chicago, Circuit 12 Contemporary, Dallas, The Contemporary, London, Kunstverein Speyer, Germany, Umbrella Gallery, Leeds, and Five Years, London. She is the recipient of the 2014 Chazen Prize to an Outstanding MFA Student, a University of Wisconsin fellowship and the Blink Grant for Public Art 2013. Her work is included in the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection and numerous other private collections.

Cecilia Jansson is known for her well-crafted sculptures, large scale embroidery and drawings. She exhibited at the Swatch pavilion at the 2015 Venice biennale, the OpenArt Sweden bienalle, Gallery Art Labor Shanghai and Kvarntorp Sculpture Park Sweden. She has been a head teacher in sculpture at Örebro Art College and a guest lecturer at Yunnan Arts Institute Kunming, China. She was awarded with Örebro County culture prize 2015. Recent residencies includes Swatch Art Peace Hotel Shanghai, The Pottery Workshop Jingdezhen and most recently NARS Foundation.

Euyoung Hong, an artist and researcher, explores the ways in which the relationship between ideas, things and the urban is redefined through the politics of space. From a spatial perspective, it explores the transformation of the meaning and function of everyday objects in the complex relationship between the production of urban space and the logic of capital. Holds degrees in sculpture from Ewha Womans University, the University of Iowa and a PhD from Goldsmiths College. She is the recipient of grants and prizes, provided by Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Gyeonggi, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, Second Prize, Premio Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milano and Paradise Culture Foundation, Seoul. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with Saatchi Gallery, London, Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC), Belfast, Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, Gallery Hyundai, Korea, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York and many others.

Christine Rebhuhn’s recent work examines objects with a sharp observation of visual overlap, and a sensibility for humor. She searches for an uncanny juncture where mundane objects iterate each other formally – like visual poetry, with a dry layer of deadpan comedy. These ideas develop sculpturally, often in a ridiculous way. Rebhuhn received a BA from Kalamazoo College in 2011, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015. She recently participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Makeshift. Her work has been shown at Silvermine Gallery, Cranbrook Art Museum, and in the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in Korea. She is represented in the permanent collection of the Korean Ceramic Foundation.

Alisha Wessler explores hybrid objects, their narrative potential and taxonomic slippage. The drawings and objects she makes occupy the indeterminate realm between reality and dream, nature and artifice. Her work taps into uncanny territory, where the familiar commingles with the unknown, strange and often foreboding. Wessler lives and works in New York City. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she also received a Certificate in Museum Studies. She has participated in the MeetFactory Residency (Prague, Czech Republic), the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Winter Workspace Residency at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), and currently at the NARS International Artist Residency Program.