Periodically, BRIC invites well-known artists and arts professionals to create a Short List of some of their favorite artists in the BRIC Contemporary Artist Registry. The artists on the Short List are featured in the main slideshow on the Registry homepage.
Current Short List Curator
Kris Nuzzi
The artists in this short list all explore the notion of time in different ways. Time can be something wasted, something we don't have enough of, the thing that changes everything and ultimately forms our pasts and futures. This group creates time sensitive work to encourage the viewer to reflect on how they use their own time and the limited time they have left. Artist Jessica Baker utilizes materials from nature, such as leaves, seeds and branches. Through her mixed media works and site-specific installations, she explores the limited life span of her materials, preserves their memories as well as comments on the impermanence of life and art. Similarly, Traci Molloy's photographic and print series explore the passing of time, memory and loss. Her series White Dandelions consists of black and white photographs that are layered with text that include days, numbers and minutes to signify excessive amounts of time. When you get closer to the work, the figures begin to fade into the background, leaving only the markings of time visible. By combining the image with the text, the work speaks to how our memories fade after a loved one passes and time goes on. The room installations created by Alison Owen explore the traces left behind by past builders, remodelers, cleaners and inhabitants, connecting the space's past life with her present life. She subtly alters the environments over the course of several days, using materials such as masking tape, thumbtacks, dirt and thread to create a connection between the objects and the physical and emotional associations with the site. She uses the space’s history combined with her intervention to explore its changes over time. In Shannon Finnegan's 2012 work titled Both: This is possible / This is impossible she uses time as a control and parameter in her work. In these labor-intensive "drawings", she types two sentences repeatedly for 8 hours. She chooses sentences that are contradictory in order to explore how she relates to the duality of both phrases. Lastly, Nicholas Fraser's site-specific works explore the idea of art lasting for a short time at a particular moment in time. His work Unfixed/Unfixable is an ongoing series of ephemeral text drawings made from ash that he strategically places in urban areas with high pedestrian traffic. The texts are described by the artist as "observations of common and fleeting moments." The ash smudges, disintegrates and quickly disappears under the foot traffic. In the end, the only things that are left are the documents and memories that together capture the different stages of the work. Through this series we see the temporal and transitory nature of his process.
Kris Nuzzi is a Brooklyn based independent curator and currently works as an art advisor. She received her BA in art history from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and her MA in the art market from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where her focus was site-specific installation art. She is the 2011-2012 recipient of the Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellowship, through which she curated the exhibition Figured and organized the public program Embody at the BRIC Rotunda Gallery. As an independent curator, her next exhibition titled Don’t Worry What Happens Happens Mostly Without You will open this May at the Radiator Gallery in Long Island City.
Current Short List Artists
Jessica Baker - Kensington, Brooklyn, NY
Traci Molloy - Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
Alison Owen - Brooklyn, NY
Shannon Finnegan - New York, NY
Nicholas Fraser - Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY