Sarah E. Brook: Mark (con) Me In (sec) This Moment (rate) Whole
Mark (con) Me In (sec) This Moment (rate) Whole | Installation View| Press Release
June 4 – August 1, 2021
Opening Reception: June 4th, 6-9pm
Open Source Gallery presents Mark (con) Me In (sec) This Moment (rate) Whole, a site-specific installation by Sarah E. Brook.
When a church is no longer in active use, it is “deconsecrated” and religious blessing is purportedly removed from the space. But if we consider holy to mean making whole, or inviting the totality of potential into an object, a place, a self, then the creative power to mark meaning belongs to everyone. Brook was raised Catholic and lived for a time in a Catholic spiritual community. Though no longer practicing, she retains Catholicism’s potent language of sacramentality: material is transformed by ritual intention to embody the holy. And we can all do it.
Mark (con) Me In (sec) This Moment (rate) Whole is an expansive installation that explores the relationship between external and internal (psychic) vastness, and offers spaciousness as a tool to encounter our own unbounded narratives of being. Utilizing color gradients, translucency, perspective layering and light, Brook builds the site into a catalyst for transformation. Brook is particularly interested in the ways queer identity can be embodied with deep, uncompromised resonance through an intimacy with expanse and light: somatic experiences of wholeness precede cognitive integration.
Punctuating the expansive energy of perceptual abstraction are small sculptural texts, drawing our attention down into focused specificity, marking moments sharply. The language reminds us that there are shifts to make, light to claim. Mark (con) Me In (sec) This Moment (rate) Whole puts forth the aesthetics of transfiguration in the hopes that it reminds us of the vastness we each embody. It invites us to engage in the resistant act of marking our own inherent (sacramental) wholeness.
Sarah E. Brook is a Brooklyn-based sculptor and installation artist from the Nevada high desert. She has exhibited widely in NYC and was included in the 2019 BRIC Biennial in Brooklyn. Brook has been awarded the 2019-2020 Leslie-Lohman Museum Fellowship (NY), the 2018 Media Arts Fellowship from BRIC (NY) and residencies from Marble House Projects, I-Park, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Jentel Foundation, Playa and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Public art sculptures include Open Shelter (Prospect Park, NY, 2016), Viewfinding, a collaboration with queer poets (Riverside Park, NY, 2018) and Align (Crystal Park, NY, 2019).
On June 18, 2020, Artfare hosted an artist talk with Sarah E. Brook and Open Source Gallery.
