Closing Reception:
Sunday, November 9, 4-6pm
Special Event:
On Sunday, November 9th, at 3pm Saya Woolfalk’s exhibition ChimaTEK Beta Launch, will host a partial-demonstration of the Empathics’ system for self-transformation. The demonstration will be led by Biet Simkin*, a leading expert in emotional and intellectual cleansing and remixing via meditation techniques. A combination of breathing, virtual travel, and aural exercises this session begins at 3pm and will last approximately 50 min. This event is free but seating is limited so please RSVP to with RSVP in the subject.
(The Closing Reception for Saya Woolfalk and Vandana Jain will follow from 4-6pm and is open to the public.)
*Biet Simkin, creator of Center of the Cyclone, brings meditation into peoples’ everyday lives. Raised by her Shaman/ Psychotherapist father Dr. Grigory Simkin, her first experience with passion and presence came to life with art, cinema and music growing up in New York City. She spent the large part of her 20’s ‘burning’ as Jack Kerouac would say and looking for enlightenment in destruction. Due to gaps she found in her environment, she felt she could benefit her communities by bringing the spiritual and cultural together. Her carefully crafted meditation practice embraces the intellectual, the spiritual, the romantic and the instinctive rather than leaning too heavily on the elusive metaphysical. Simkin has lead meditations in art galleries around New York City with the premise that enlightenment can be found without moving to a distant mountain. For more information about Ms. Simkin please visit www.centerofthecyclone.com. An interview with her can be found at http://newyorknatives.com/kokoro-chic-lets-get-present/.
Smack Mellon is pleased to present two new installations by New York based artists Saya Woolfalk and Vandana Jain. In each of their hallucinatory installations, both New York-based artists explore the evolving influence of corporations and their relationship to the collective consciousness. Fast forwarding to a post-human future in Chimatek Beta Launch, Saya Woolfalk expands on the utopian narrative of her fictional species of women, the Empathics, who manipulate their genetic information to blend racial and ethnic identities and acquire characteristics of humans and plants during their transformations. In this immersive installation, the Empathics present their newly formed corporation, Chimatek, offering a patented technology which provides interspecies and intersubjective hybridization. Meanwhile in the back gallery, inspired by the historical Razzle Dazzle style of ship camouflage used in World War I, Vandana Jain camouflages corporate logos within an elaborate array of prismatic stripes in her wall installation Dazzle. By rendering the logos unfamiliar, Jain questions the influence these icons hold within the symbolic language of our times.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lambent Foundation, The O’Grady Foundation, Gilbert Mackay Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., Richard J. Massey Foundation for the Arts & Sciences, The Robert Lehman Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Image credits:
Left: Saya Woolfalk, Chimera, 2013, Digital Video and mixed media installation at MoCA Taipei, 13’ x 18’ x 25’, 4 min 12 sec; Right: Vandana Jain, Dazzle Unicorn, 2010.
