Destruction of Pleasure
Alisa Baremboym
Sascha Braunig
Lea Cetera
Jesse Cohen
Ivy Haldeman
Lena Imamura
Avery Singer
Pinar Yolaçan
Curated by Lea Cetera
Opening Reception:
Thursday, November 1, 6:00 - 8:00pm
Exhibition Dates:
November 2 - November 29, 2018
AGENCY
20 Jay Street, Suite M14
Brooklyn NY 11201
Gallery hours: by appointment.
Press release
Still from Mulher Maravilha (Wonder Woman), Pinar Yolaçan, 2014, 2:01 min, HD video (courtesy the artist)
Destruction of Pleasure
Curated by Lea Cetera
Alisa Baremboym, Sascha Braunig, Lea Cetera, Jesse Cohen, Ivy Haldeman, Lena Imamura, Avery Singer, and Pinar Yolaçan.
"It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it...Not in favour of a reconstructed new pleasure, which cannot exist in the abstract, nor of intellectualized unpleasure ... The alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, or daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire."
- Laura Mulvey from her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975
Destruction of Pleasure brings together eight artists that play with feminism, corporeality, illusion and surrealism in their work in order to create a perspective that complicates traditional expectations of the viewer. In her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey called for the destruction of the traditional male-oriented gaze and the cultivation of alternative perspectives. Mulvey declared "Destruction of Pleasure is a Radical Weapon", that the traditional "scopophilic" view of film had always belonged to the masculine, and that there would be a conception of a new viewpoint, that of an unknown, new "language of desire". The works in the show offer ecstatic new narratives, histories, considerations from a new generation of female artists creating across a variety of media a visual language that is uniquely their own.
Lea Cetera is an artist that works in sculpture, video and performance, with a history of working collaboratively in theater and film. A 4th generation Brooklyn-born, native New Yorker, she attended the Cooper Union School of Art (BFA 2005) and Columbia University (MFA 2011). She lives and works in NYC. For more information please visit www.leacetera.com.
This is the inaugural show in the Colloquy series, where artists are invited to curate a show that includes their own work alongside other artists they are in dialog with. These exhibitions present an archive of a specific discourse while providing an additional layer of context to the artists practice.
Meta Meta Meta LLC is a collaborative arts organization run by artists Leah Wolff and Guy Ben-Ari. Since 2009, they have been facilitating creative and discursive activities with the aim of supporting a diverse community of underrepresented artists through collaboration and community engagement. Meta Meta Meta LLC teaches workshops, organizes events, and produces publications in order to empower the public through increased access to the arts. AGENCY is a project space located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, established by Meta Meta Meta, LLC with the goal of promoting underrepresented and emerging Brooklyn based artists.