Event
Special Exhibition Virtual Program: Brandon Ndife & Nora Lawrence
6:00pm — 7:00pm
Please join us for a virtual conversation featuring Storm King’s 2022 Outlooks artist, Brandon Ndife, and Artistic Director and Chief Curator, Nora Lawrence. Topics will include Ndife’s site-specific installation at Storm King, Shade Tree, along with larger themes in his sculpture practice.
Program Details
Approximately one hour. Questions may be submitted in advance or via the Zoom interface.
Registration
This program is free, please register via Eventbrite >
Registered attendees will receive Zoom link and instructions via email.
Accessibility
This program is offered virtually via Zoom in lecture format. Speakers will appear on camera, but attendees will not. Captioning is available for this program. ASL interpretation and visual description are available with two weeks advanced request. All efforts will be made to meet requests made with less notice.
If you have questions, or need other accommodations, please be in touch: info@stormkingartcenter.org
About Outlooks: Brandon Ndife
Working primarily with domestic items, including furniture he makes by hand, Ndife manipulates objects’ appearance by casting them in polyurethane foam and resin. In the shade of the canopy and encircling the trunk of a maple tree in Storm King’s outdoor Maple Rooms, Ndife’s sculpture, titled Shade Tree, is embedded with whole cast tables, chairs, headboards, and bedposts—household forms fused together in imposing accumulations and embalmed in a perpetual state of decay. Siting Shade Tree in the Maple Rooms allows for a play between interiority and exteriority, protection and exposure. For Ndife, the suggestion of decomposition equally implies rebirth, regeneration, and opportunities for new growth. Ndife has said that much of his work is “about the interior, about these spaces that we deem safe because they’re in our homes—they’re our cabinets, our dressers, our personal space. Working outside, I wanted to extend that conversation and think about exclusion—planned exclusion—and nature’s course, which is a canopy above all of us, something that we affect but can’t control.” With Shade Tree, Ndife interrogates the legacy of redlining, or the systematically sanctioned racial segregation of real estate, which recent studies have shown often left poorer communities and communities of color in urban areas with fewer green spaces and less tree cover. Rising temperatures and worsening impacts of climate change in formerly redlined areas contribute to the increased susceptibility of these communities to deadly heat waves. As viewers stand beneath the tree canopies, Ndife encourages consideration of shade as both a natural phenomenon and a scarce commodity, saying, “Shade Tree is grounded by the universal truth that no place is exempt from economic and residential difference.”
About Brandon Ndife
Brandon Ndife (b. 1991 Hammond, IN; lives and works in New York) received a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Solo and two-person exhibitions include: Down to the Spoons and Forks, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, 2022; MY ZONE, Bureau, New York, 2020; Minor twin worlds with Diane Severin Nguyen, Bureau, New York, 2019; Ties That Bind, Shoot the Lobster, New York, 2018; Just Passin’ Thru, Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, 2016; Meanderthal, Species, Atlanta, 2016. Group exhibitions include New Museum Triennial: Soft Water Hard Stone, New Museum, New York, 2021; Cascadence, Altman Siegel, San Francisco, 2021; Winterfest, Aspen Art. Museum, Aspen, 2021; Material Conditions, Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020; Fixing the “not… but”, LC Queisser, Tbilisi, 2019; Dinner that night, Bureau, New York, 2018.
About Nora Lawrence
Nora Lawrence (she/her) is the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of Storm King Art Center, leading its curatorial program and providing vision and guidance for the artistic functions of the institution. Lawrence has played an integral role in raising the museum’s profile—seeing its audience grow four-fold and working with artists to realize ambitious works while also bringing in a new generation of artists.
Lawrence is currently co-curating a 2023 site-specific commission with Martin Puryear and recently led Storm King’s commission of Sarah Sze’s permanent site-specific sculpture, which opened in 2021. Lawrence has developed nearly 20 exhibitions, working with artists including Lynda Benglis, Mark Dion, Rashid Johnson, and Wangechi Mutu. She established Storm King’s annual Outlooks program, which invites one artist to realize a temporary site-specific work. Artists include Brandon Ndife, Virginia Overton, Heather Hart, and Elaine Cameron-Weir, among others. Lawrence also co-founded the Shandaken: Storm King residency at Storm King.