Pratt in Venice alumnus Xingze Li (PiV ‘18) is exhibiting work in the group exhibition, Facts of Light, at Cathouse Proper in Brooklyn, New York.
I turn on my phone. I’m inundated; never has so much “information” been available. Everything is labelled, named, coded. Algorithms endlessly reinforce binaries and certitudes. Subtlety was banished long ago.
I turn off my phone, look at the wall, zone out. Allow my mind to wander. Tell myself the wall is white. I look again. There: an area of faint ochre. There: a greenish blush. Later in the day the wall darkens to maroon. Old questions reoccur: How do we separate the perceived object from the light in which it appears? From the spatial and social conditions of seeing? The physiological and psychological apparatus of vision? The artists in this show don’t provide easy answers to these questions. We’re invited to slow down, consider, wonder. Perhaps paradoxically, this is accomplished through the advanced printing techniques digital photography makes available. Is the light in Xingze Li’s images “actual” light? What is the line between representation and embodiment in Gwenn Thomas’s trapezoidal windows and glass “ingots,” in Robert(a) Marshall’s images of curtains printed on mirrors? In J Pasila’s photographs of her studio, are we looking at the corner of the room, at a shadow? In Elisa Sighicelli’s pictures, what is the relationship between the fabric on which the image is printed and the fabric that’s represented? In Ethan Ryman’s work, how can the experience of the picture be separated out from the experience of the object in architectural space?
All of these artists ask us to pause, to stop naming and coding quite so quickly. To consider the place where the subjective and the objective meet. To resist, for a moment, pinning everything down.
Xingze Li is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Brooklyn. He has exhibited and curated in China, America, and Denmark. He has had solo and two-person exhibitions in New York City at venues including Dekalb Gallery, Tutu Gallery, and Hunter East Harlem Gallery. Recent group exhibitions have taken place at the Pratt Institute Manhattan Library and cfcp gallery in New York City, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, and Carlsberg Byens Galleri & Kunstsalon in Copenhagen. He has curated shows including Small Root (2018), and F-1: Out Inside (2019) in Brooklyn, NY. Notable awards include the 77ART Residency, Pratt Graduate Student Engagement Fund, Cope NYC Residency, and Pratt in Venice Scholarship. Li earned his bachelor's degree in 2015 from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2019.
Facts of Light
Xingze Li, Robert(a) Marshall, J Pasila, Ethan Ryman, Elisa Sighicelli, Gwenn Thomas
Guest curator: Robert(a) Marshall
Cathouse Proper @ 524 Projects
524 Court St
Brooklyn, NY 11231
Opens Saturday, November 13, 2021, 2–7pm
