"from Here to Eternity"
two-person show
Shadi Harouni and Sally Ross
January 26 - March 3, 2019
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Shadi Harouni, "Last Day of the Bombardments" (2007/2017)
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Taking advantage of the inherent narrative structure of the gallery’s arrangement of rooms, which move the viewer from a compressed to expansive space, "from Here to Eternity" installs one work each by two very different artists that, nonetheless, form a tight, refracted exchange about, most generally, immigration and the sublime. Taking its title from the troubling, yet award-winning film from 1953 about military life just before the transformative attacks at Pearl Harbor, "from Here to Eternity" charts an aspirational distance that can never be fully traversed, something like the American Dream itself, if one can still speak of such fantasies...
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Shadi Harouni contributes "Last Day of the Bombardments" (2007/2017), a framed facsimile of a Polaroid with hand written text in Farsi, which documents a quintessential family unit posed on the cusp of a sea, seemingly recording a moment that ensnares the migrant family's hopes and horrors.
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Sally Ross contributes "Ball Drop, Dropped Balls" (2019), a monumental constructed, painted and sewn canvas, a kind of Frankensteinian-American tapestry/quilt/mosaic, hung vertically, that employs gravity, simple mechanics, and caged painted balls set within a Depression-era, polka dot, flour-sack dress motif.
“Because I want to be proper.”
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“Proper?”
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“Yes, proper. In another year I’ll have enough money saved then I’m going to go back to my hometown in Oregon and I’m gonna build a house for my mother and myself and join the country club and take up golf and I’ll meet the proper man with the proper position and make a proper wife who can run a proper home and raise proper children and I’ll be happy because when you’re proper, you’re safe!”*
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*Lorene, played by Donna Reed, in the film, "From Here to Eternity"
Artist Biographies:
Shadi Harouni is an artist based in New York and Tehran. Harouni's practice ranges from site-specific interventions and sculptures, to printmaking, photography and film. Her work considers the metaphysics of hope alive in contested bodies, forbidden objects and forgotten spaces. Her research is centered on disavowed and marginalized histories of dissent and resistance, chiefly in the Middle East. Harouni’s projects have been exhibited at Kunstmuseum Bonn (DE), MUCA Roma (MX), Prague City Gallery (CZ), University of Toronto (CA), Fondazione Ratti (IT), Queens Museum (NY), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NY). Her work has been featured in Art Forum, The New York Times, The Guardian and Flash Art, among others. She has been awarded a Gattuso Prize for Outstanding Exhibition, Harpo Foundation Grant for Artists, residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (ME), Civitella Ranieri (IT), SOMA (MX), LES Printshop (NY), Artists Research Laboratory, Como (IT). She holds an MFA from New York University, and a BA from University of Southern California. Harouni is Assistant Professor and Head of BFA Studio Arts at New York University, Steinhardt.
Sally Ross, born in Morristown, New Jersey, grew up in Florham Park, a borough of Morris County. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in painting from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1987. This institutional education, steeped in 1970s art making and materialism, was initially rejected by Ross as a stubborn but prolific student, and later in her artistic practice for nearly thirty years. Only recently has Ross begun to embrace the material perspectives taught during her years at NYS College of Ceramics. Ross’s paintings in their materiality and actionable qualities exude her playful curiosity and above all, her desire for freedom from the framework of painting. Her first European exhibition, Painting Piece-By-Piece, was presented by the Maramotti Collection in 2018. Recent exhibitions include Sally Ross, Fergus McCaffrey, New York, 2018; Works of the Jenney Archive, Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2013; Monkey Wrench, Sean Horton Gallery, New York, 2011; The Fifth Genre, Galerie Lelong, New York, 2010; and Sally Ross, Gallery Min Min, Tokyo, 2008. She currently lives and works in New York, New York.