Brendan Fernandes and Jess Wilcox: Still Move
Thursday, December 15, 2016
6 to 8pm
Brendan Fernandes, The Working Move, 2012. [Image Description: A black and white photo of a shirtless dancer wearing ballet flats and tights, who stands in a lunging position with his hands gripping a white cube that is half his height. His left leg is propelled backward to give him more ability to push while his right leg is firmly in place below his chest. The background is a piece of gray fabric.]
The launch of Brendan Fernandes' forthcoming monograph Still Move, published by Black Dog Press in London, featured a conversation between Fernandes and curator Jess Wilcox, followed by a reception. For the last five years, the artist has explored how stillness and static gesture can be powerful tools of resistance. Informed by his training in ballet and modern dance, Fernandes routinely explores the role of the body within social and political spaces, questioning and breaking down the notion of hegemony. Inspired by choreographic vocabularies relating to labor and endurance, the work demonstrates his interest in responding to histories of avant-garde dance and its relationship to visual art. Taking on numerous forms, he builds on an effort to negotiate a complex sense of both individual and cultural identities within performative acts.
Bios
Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from the University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Art and Design New York, Art in General, Musee d'art Contemporary de Montreal, The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, Brooklyn Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Mass MoCA, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Art Gallery of York University, Deutsche Guggenheim, Bergen Kunsthall, Stedelijk Museum, The Sculpture Center, Manif d'Art: The Quebec City Biennial, The Third Guangzhou Triennial, and the Western New York Biennial through The Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
Fernandes has been awarded many highly regarded residencies around the world including The Canada Council for the Arts International Residency in Trinidad and Tobago (2006), The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Work Space (2008), Swing Space (2009), and Process Space (2014) and invitations to the Gyeonggi Creation Centre at the Gyeonggi Museum of Art, Korea (2009) and ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2011). He was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award, Canada's preeminent award for contemporary art in 2010 and was on the longlist for the award in 2013 and 2015. He was a 2014 recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Residency and Fellowship. A national Canadian tour of his work recently concluded and has culminated in the monograph Still Move produced by Black Dog Press in London in Fall 2016. He is currently Artist-in-Residence and faculty at Northwestern University in Department of Art Theory and Practice.
Jess Wilcox is the Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, Queens. Previously she worked at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she organized public programs and projects including Between the Door and the Street, a performance initiated by Suzanne Lacy; A Butterfly for Brooklyn, a pyrotechnic work by Judy Chicago; and co-curated the exhibition Agitprop!. She has curated shows at Abrons Art Center, ISCP, and SculptureCenter, among others. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and a M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.