Cognition-Stroll
Becky Brown, Annette Cords
June 14th – July 28th, 2017
Project: ARTspace is pleased to present Cognition-Stroll, a two-person exhibition by Annette Cords and Becky Brown, featuring tapestries, weavings, drawings and paintings in an installation of printed wallpaper designed by the artists. The show opens June 14 and will run through July 28.
“Cognition-Stroll” is a literal English translation of the German compound word Erkenntnisspaziergang, a practice of going out to gain deeper insight while walking. The concept links the artists’ shared interests in semiotics, accidental poetry and multi-sensory movement through the dense New York City streets they both call home. Brown and Cords collect images, texts and patterns (a graffiti fragment, a title from a subway poet) that are combined and transformed into new compositions. Navigating between the pleasure of accumulation and the desire for structure, they examine how text and images are read and seen; the implications of abstracting found material; and legibility, meaning and misinterpretation in visual-textual languages.
Cords’ tapestries interlace traditional weave structures with urban mark-making and found text. Brown’s works on paper take the form of oversized notebooks and maps, increasingly replaced by digital substitutes. The artists have collaborated on a wallpaper project to create an immersive environment while reframing and punctuating their work. The design draws on a shared pool of images they have exchanged over three years—including the interior of a Brooklyn pizza parlor and a Le Corbusier building facade in Berlin—emphasizing geometric pattern through repetition.
Images are further extended into a publication with a text by artist and writer Tatiana Istomina, connecting Cords’ and Brown’s Cognition-Stroll with clergyman John Wilkins’ early Enlightenment research into universal language.
A panel discussion titled “Collage City” on Wednesday, July 12, at 6:30pm will bring together radio DJ and programmer Gaylord Fields; professor of Global Studies and Geography Laura Y. Liu; and artist Lisa Sigal to explore collage as compositional directive and urban design; adaptive reuse; abstraction and translation.
Annette Cords was born in the North of Germany, raised in Hamburg and currently lives in New York City. Combining a variety of media, from painting to weaving and installation, she is interested in the vernacular of the street—signage, written words, the visible mark of the hand, and how these elements co-occur, amplify, and overwrite each other. Recent solo exhibitions include Sideways, New York Public Library; Diamond Days, Villa Rosenthal, Jena, Germany; Turnarounds, AxD Gallery, Philadelphia; and Cross-Coupling, Posie Kviat Gallery, Hudson, NY. Her work has appeared in group shows at venues including The Drawing Center, Odetta Gallery, Kentler International Drawing Space, MASS MoCA, Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles and Michael Steinberg Fine Art. She has been the recipient of grants and residencies including a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Change Inc, Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship. www.annettecords.net
Becky Brown was born in Manhattan, moved to Brooklyn and currently lives in the Bronx. She works between painting, drawing, sculpture and installation using found images, objects and texts. Diverse materials inform her practice, including pre-modern poetic forms, discarded appliances, architectural theory and current photo-journalism. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Drawing Center, NYC; Dixon Place, NYC; NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; Fort Gondo Complex for the Arts, St. Louis, MO; and Religare Arts Initiative, Delhi, India. She has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Saltonstall Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation, among others. Her art criticism has been published in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail. She was the 2016-17 Visiting Resident Artist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Brown University. www.thelotterysong.com