After the Pedestal, the 12th exhibition of small sculpture from the region, Sculpture Center Cleveland 2019

Juror, Sarah O’Keeffe

Juror’s Statement
A vast mycorrhizal network deep beneath the ground connects trees and other plant life to one another. This fungal web?—comprised of innumerable white tendril-like threads?—serves as channeling through which plants share and redistribute a whole host of supplies? necessary for plant life to thrive: water, carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients and minerals. This entanglement between species—fungi and its plant host—first springs in the plant’s rhizosphere, or root system, and quickly multiplies, growing into fungal strands that can span miles. Recent studies have noted striking similarities between the signals sent across mycorrhizal networks and the flares dispatched across human and animal neural networks. Through these signals, plants warn one another of infectious bacteria in the area or of invading insects drawing near. When connected through these networks, plants survive at exponentially higher rates than when in isolation.

Studies of plants and their environment reveal complex ecologies and astonishing relationships between species that allow for life to persist. Through careful examination of these forms, evocative metaphors about dependency, violence, power, care, and collectivity emerge. Many of the works in this exhibition invoke organic matter, suggesting larger questions about the relationships between beings, and the social and environmental structures creatures inhabit. Ultimately, these works point to a dizzying array of models, providing analogies for how we might understand our own.

Juror 2019
Sara O’Keeffe is an Associate Curator at the New Museum. She was part of the curatorial teams that organized “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” (with Johanna Burton, 2017-2018), and the “2015 Triennial: Surround Audience” (with Lauren Cornell and Ryan Trecartin, 2015). She curated “RAGGA NYC: All the threated and delicious things joining one another” (2015) and “Screens Series: Dynasty Handbag” (2018-2019), and co-curated “Jeffrey Gibson: The Anthropophagic Effect” (2019); “MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas: Consciousness Razing—The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project”(2018-2019); “A.K. Burns: Shabby but Thriving” (2017); “My Barbarian: The Audience is Always Right” (2016); “Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: Song, Strategy, Sign” (2016); “Cheryl Donegan: Scenes and Commercials” (2015-2016); and “Wynne Greenwood: Kelly” (2015), all with Johanna Burton.

Sculptures by Lauren Baker, Carol Boram-Hays, Casey Bradley, Peggy Breidenbach, Rebecca Cross, Michelle Droll, Ana England & Steven Finke, Benjamin Johnson, Jennifer L. Jones, Jacquie Wynn Kennedy, Sharon Koelblinger, Mona Kolesar, Kristine Mifsud, Joyce Morrow-Jones, Donald Stuart, and E. D. Taylor

artist statement
Preservation Sequence (2018) is a series of futuristic, natural history objects, which I think of as “exprints” of imagined, extinct plant species. The drawings that are etched into their glass covers are developed from shadows first cast by the silk forms. This work considers a plausible future, where what is familiar now exists only as skins and tracings of remembered bioforms.