Berlin-based sculptor Jenny Brockmann made her New York debut with the multidisciplinary and discursive exhibition Dialogues on a Future Communication. A product of several years of collaborative exchange with curator Niama Safia Sandy and research in topics as varied as resilience, critical race theory, social evolution biology, and urban planning, Dialogues on A Future Communication explored diverse knowledge bases and how seemingly unrelated data may be critically interwoven. 

For Dialogues on a Future Communication, Brockmann crafted two new sculptures Seat #16 and Archive of a Future Memory. Constructed of an aluminum alloy, Seat #16 is the physical embodiment of Brockmann’s investigations of human behavioral patterns. It consists of 16 individual seats connected by eight intersecting beams that each support two seats which must be at equilibrium. If one side of the connected seat is unoccupied, the other will be completely imbalanced creating a need for communication between the sitters.

The second sculpture, Archive of a Future Memory, is a sprawling structure also made of aluminum. Undulating, capacious and serpentine, the sculpture is inspired in part by the biblical creature Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes’ 1651 treatise on government Leviathan, and the double-helix, the molecular structure of nucleic acid that composes genetic coding in all organisms.

Formally, Brockmann’s architectural sculptures are a reflection of the Bauhaus principle that all parts of the material world can be integrated through art and design. The works that were shown in Dialogues on a Future Communication are reflective of a spatial articulation of the artist’s deep interdisciplinary study. Brockmann’s designs seek to be at once fragmented and capacious enough to hold space for all of the epistemological and ideological shifts she has encountered in working on the project, while also leaving space for viewers to share their knowledge. In this dialectical flow of information, the sculptures transform into new spaces that allow for the development of new structures of understanding. To bring these figurative spaces of understanding into being, Brockmann built connections with over a dozen New York cultural practitioners and scientists to create her program.

Curator: Niama Safia Sandy

Participants: Mario Gooden, RRC, Daniel Kronauer, Dina Shvetsov, Sheen Levine, Jes Fan, Stephanie Dinkins, Shelley Niro, Beldan Sezen, Birgit Möckel, Elizabeth Povinelli, Tasha Douge, Alexander Manevitz, Luciana Solano and Danielle Wu.

Exhibition program:

Entanglement #1: CARE: September 24, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Tour 1-4 (in preparation for Entanglement #3) : September 25, 3:30 p.m. / 4:30 p.m.
Entanglement #2: RESILIENCE: September 26, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Entanglement #3: VIOLENCE: October 1, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Entanglement #4: REFUSAL AND EMANCIPATION: October 3, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Jenny Brockmann: Dialogues on a Future Communication was curated by Niama Safia Sandy, commissioned by 1014 Inc. and funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and by Willms Neuhaus Foundation, Berlin. Entanglement#2 has been developed as a collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. The exhibition catalog was published by Konnotation Press.

Photos: Sarah Blesener