Andrea Ray: Utopians Dance
May 10 – June 9, 2013
Opening Reception: May 10, 7-9pm
Open Source is pleased to announce Utopians Dance, an exhibition with Andrea Ray on view from 10 May – 2 June 2013. Please join us for a reception with the artist on Friday, 10 May, from 7 to 9pm.
Working at the intersection of pre-recorded and real-time experience, Ray creates environments with sculpture, light, and architecture from which sound is deciphered. Audio narratives are commonly deployed to instill a sense of presence and absence investigating issues of ill-perceived limitations between a subject and her environment. Recent work explores issues of subjectivity, agency and community through, for example, proposed forms of alternative living and utopian communities.
Within this thread of inquiry, for her exhibition at Open Source, Ray will present new works under the title Utopians Dance. Included in the exhibition is a small installation (A Cure for the Marriage Spirit), resembling a reading room. Within it, is Ray’s script that traces the story of a character emerging from divorce who attempts to redefine her subjectivity through research into 19th century utopian feminist communities and an interest in polyamory. The piece questions whether the freedom yearned for might be obtained through society’s acceptance of non-monogomous forms of relationships.
In the main space is a sound installation (Utopians Dance) incorporating strung lights, music and spoken word to evoke a relationship to cooperative economies and dance. References to social economies are heard intertwined with dance calls. The atmosphere evokes the desire for joy and freedom, and asks whether we’ll join the dance.
Poetic, bookish and at times, purposefully romantic, the exhibition traces an attempt to define a bright way to formulate a better future. Utopians Dance presents an exploration of subjectivity through the lens of the social.
Andrea Ray (b. 1967 in Utica, New York) lives and works in New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Wesleyan University’s Zilkha Gallery (2008), Suite 106 (2004), and Cuchifritos (2002) in NY. Her work has been shown at venues including Sculpture Center, PS1 Moma Clocktower and Apex Art, and internationally including the Wanås Foundation in Sweden and venues in Dublin, Brussels, and Turin. She was awarded an Art Matters grant (2008) and is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship recipient (2004/2012). Residency awards include The MacDowell Colony (2012), Cité International des Artes in Paris (2004), LMCC’s New Views (2002), and PS1 Moma National Studio Program (2000). Ray is an alumni of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, received her BFA from RISD, and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. In the fall, she will begin studies in Sweden’s Malmö Art Academy toward a PhD in Fine Art Practice.
Utopians Dance | Installation Shots | Resume | Press | Press Release
