“In Practice: Total Disbelief” at SculptureCenter engages the idea of “doubt” and how it plays a role in society. The works appear in forms like narratives, video records, documentation, research, and more. These are all legitimate tools people use to dictate truths in real life. However, the artists playfully alter the elements in their works to make the validity of hard to discern. Jordan Strafer’s two-channel video installation, PEP, achieves the discrepancy in truth by assembling the work with clips of contrasting styles. The video confronts victimhood as a woman tells her story in a court and struggles to convince the jury of her credibility. Like the characters in the video, viewers are also challenged to piece together the story and judge its truthfulness.
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| Jordan Strafer, PEP (Process Entanglement Procedure), 2019. Two-channel HD video, color, sound. 15:00 minutes. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Kyle Knodell |
The show also provides a wonderful opportunity for witnessing the emergence of new generations of artists. Especially, their courage to challenge conventions and explore new materials. Hadi Fallahpisheh’s piece consists of found materials such as sand, fabric, and cardboard. Ambiguous names were assigned: Foreign Animal, Sand Monkey, Blind Spot. Do these names indeed represent the forms on display? It is up to the viewers to decide.
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| Hadi Fallahpisheh, blind spot, 2019-20. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Kyle Knodell |
Certainly, the artists demonstrate the fragile boundary between truth and deception; whether by creating the works understandable from multiple stances, or sparking the viewer’s skepticism with the choice of material. The ambiguity between fact and fiction provides a reflection of the real world, as we are constantly required to judge and draw up conclusions on what we believe to be the truth.
The exhibition space at SculptureCenter was a little disorientating for me and I found it hard to focus on the artworks placed around the area (be it ground level or basement). The video installation described was a good example of doubt in this exhibition’s theme. It was a “documentary” of her story yet there was no absolute truth or lies, which provoked the audience’s curiosity. It would be a smoother read if the last/start sentence of each paragraph transit over better. Perhaps a detailed description of how we should see these works in an untraditional point of view.
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