art
Rafel Domenech: Model to Exhaust This Place
January 16, 2020 - March 23, 2020
SculptureCenter:
44-19 Purves St,
Long Island City, NY 11101

https://www.sculpture-center.org/

In a previous life, SculptureCenter’s ground-floor gallery served as a former trolley repair shop. Its industrial gantry system, though no longer in use, remains, and inspired Cuban artist Rafael Domenech to reclaim it as a machine to produce a pavilion-like installation with materials typically destined for construction sites. Large panels made of aluminum-framed construction mesh function as what he terms “space modulators” to create various architectural configurations. Inside these constructions, Domenech presents his extensive research into concrete poetry printed on chairs and laser-cut into panels. In addition to his own writings, two poems by exiled Neo-Baroque Cuban writer Severo Sarduy (1937–93) speak to dislocation, a poignant display in Long Island City, where SculptureCenter is located, which is undergoing dramatic gentrification.

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