AFVS Faculty Kianja Strobert’s Solo Exhibition Reviewed by The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail
The Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies congratulates AFVS Assistant Professor Kianja Strobert on her recent solo exhibition Pennies from Heaven, which was exhibited at Marinaro and reviewed in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and a number of other publications.
William Corwin of The Brooklyn Rail describes the exhibition in these words:
“Kianja Strobert has fashioned eleven benches as the core of her current show, Pennies from Heaven, in acknowledgement of the fact that in New York, as in so many urban centers, the park bench acts as a pedestal on which the absurd theater of city life transpires. A variety of people and animals and objects come to rest on these ubiquitous public seats, and whether or not they are out-of-the-ordinary, they are on view and available for critique. Strobert, however, readjusts our focus from the everyday passage of life to the bench as a site in itself, abstract assemblages of objects, and questions of class and sexuality.”
Corwin concludes by stating that “after the not-so-strange sensation of wandering through a small park of ghosts, of which there are many in New York, happening upon Strobert’s witty but affecting installation in the gallery’s back room offers a gentle respite from the sensation of another gutting but illuminating day in the city.”
Marinaro’s press release suggests that “The ability to sit, to take a moment of rest, to think, or to simply be, whether through the benches or the symbolic interplay of objects, acknowledges the necessity of leisure as well as the habit of movement. Sculptural allusion to fabrics, including decorative scraps and remnants, further the dialogue on transformation, resourcefulness, and artistic reinvention—turning "rags to riches" both literally and metaphorically.”
Corwin’s full review is available at this link; the review from The New York Times can be found here. Additional reviews include those at Artlyst, Elephant, Impulse Magazine, and Spigot.
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Kianja Strobert attended The Cooper Union, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received her MFA from Yale. She has had solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including Art Omi, Ghent, NY; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Marinaro, NY; Jack Tilton, NY; Campoli Presti, Paris; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art, California. Strobert has been included in numerous group exhibitions including shows at Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY; Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY; Lehmann Maupin, NY; and The Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. Her work is held in numerous collections including the permanent collection of the U.S. Embassy in Mozambique and the National Centre for Visual Arts, France. Strobert lives and works between Hudson, NY and Cambridge, MA.
Photo by Sam Leviton for Elephant Magazine