BRIC presents ‘BRIC Biennial: Volume II, Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights Edition’ Nov. 10-Jan. 15

Second Brooklyn Biennial Features Work of Over 40 Artists Across Four Brooklyn Cultural Institutions

November 7, 2016 From BRIC

Nkiruka Oparah, Study, 2015. Courtesy of BRIC

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BRIC is pleased to present the “BRIC Biennial: Volume II, Bed-Stuy/Crown Heights Edition,” the largest and most ambitious exhibition organized by BRIC to date. This second edition of this initiative will be centered at BRIC House, with portions of the show also on view at important cultural institutions and art spaces in the neighborhoods covered by the show: the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, FiveMyles and Weeksville Heritage Center. For the second edition of the BRIC Biennial, the focus is on artists based in the rapidly changing neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights.

Curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, vice president of contemporary art, BRIC; and Jenny Gerow, assistant curator, the work of hundreds of artists based in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights were reviewed to select the approximately 40 included in this exhibition.

The bulk of the BRIC Biennial will be exhibited at BRIC House and will focus on the theme “Affective Bodies,” drawing from affect theory, which places emphasis on bodily experience rather than on learned knowledge. Artists exhibited at Weeksville Heritage Center will be grouped under the theme “The Lived City,” considering how people’s lives and experiences endow urban spaces with emotional resonance. The exhibition at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, “Translations and Annotations,” will include the work of artists who use existing texts and documents as source material. By processes of alteration, annotation, translation and reinterpretation, these artists endow these texts with new, emotional quality relevant to their lives and to the time in which we live. And finally, FiveMyles will present “In Flux,” a series of performance artists.

Overall, the BRIC Biennial highlights the significance of Brooklyn as the place where New York artists create work and develop their careers. By focusing on a small geographic area, comprehensive research can be undertaken on artists in the selected neighborhoods, highlighting those who are making important creative contributions with their work.

Given BRIC’s focus on providing platforms for Brooklyn’s emerging and mid-career artists, and the vast changes that have occurred in the borough these past few years, this theme highlights artists who address the lived experience of these neighborhoods. BRIC’s curatorial commitment has been to showcase a wide range of artists, from those who have lived in these neighborhoods their whole lives to recent arrivals, all negotiating the fraught space of community upheaval.

Tours of the exhibition for individuals and groups will be available on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. and11:30 p.m.