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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260428T130000
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SUMMARY:Working Conditions Residency Unlimited 2026 NYC Based Artist in Residence Exhibition NYCBAR
DESCRIPTION:VIDEO OF OPENING April 28\, 2026 \n\n\n“Working Conditions” is the culminating exhibition of Residency Unlimited’s 2026 NYC-Based\nArtist-in-Residence (NYCBAR) Program. \nArtists: Catherine Chen\, Ekene Ijeoma\, Rehan Miskci\, Jiangshengyu Nova Pan and LuLu Meng (2015\nRU Alum)\nCurated by Phil Zheng Cai \nOpening: Tuesday April 28\, 2026 | 6-8pm\nOn view: April 28 – May 17\, 2026 | Wednesday – Sunday\, 1-6pm \n\nLocation: Westbeth Gallery\, 55 Bethune St\, New York\, NY 10014 (map) \n \nA common screening question asked by curators and gallerists is: “Do you plan on being a professional artist for the rest of your life?”  \nThis arrogant request for proof of dedication undermines the hardship of treating art as a profession\, especially in a city like New York.\nMore often than not\, artists in the City have other jobs and find a balance between their art and non-art practices.\nTo some\, their “day jobs” are a soulless exchange for material cost\, and to others\, these occupations\ninspire and inform\, providing for their art practices in the form of subject matters\, methodologies\,\nhabits\, constraints\, or guidelines.\n​Taking its title from Hans Haacke’s collected writings\, “Working Conditions” seeks to dissect the notion\nof the “artist” into two intertwined identities: the one who makes art\, and the one who performs “artist”\nas a profession. By acknowledging their indivisibility\, the project invites five artists who maintain other\n“day jobs” to reflect on how those experiences inform their practices. Within the negotiable\nenvironment of an artist residency\, artists navigate a push and pull between their roles as pure creative\nagents and professional practitioners. \nCatherine Chen (Product Manager\, Connected Banking Growth at J.P. Morgan Chase) is an\ninterdisciplinary artist whose work enacts and embodies the ways in which digital platforms made by\ncorporate structures gamify everyday life. In her studio practice\, Chen creates paintings and drawings\nthrough a labor-intensive and accumulative process of mark-making as a way to map the immateriality\nof her fancy wagecuck into a messy physicality. During the residency at RU\, Chen expands this logic off\nthe picture plane into a physical sculpture to shift the negotiation from individual accumulation to\ncollective aggregation. Gamification is also staked in the process of making. Chen’s mother does not\nnecessarily believe in her work as art\, but agreed to help produce the sculpture once she learned of the\nartist grant\, as the money\, which she does believe in\, reorients her faith in her daughter as an artist.\nChen frames her works as “brute gamification” – in which one engages with games via total-body\ninvolvement rather than simulation. Her work gently nudges the viewers’ perceptions to reveal that\nthose appears to be a free-for-all exploration might in fact be an orchestrated trick: “Though users of\nthe Chase app click through with a sense of absolute agency\, I am aware of the physical labor that\nmakes this immaterial journey possible\, as well as the fact that there is no agency–every step of their\npath has been predetermined by me.” \nEkene Ijeoma (Founder\, Black Forest | Founder\, Poetic Justice at the MIT Media Lab) is a conceptual\nartist\, computational designer\, and experimental composer researching social\, political\, and\nenvironmental systems to develop multimedia works that expose inequities and empower\ncommunities. As a project-based artist working without a permanent studio space\, Ekene constantly\nnavigates the duality between a maker and a professional survivor. He believes that to be of service to\nsociety requires building the very infrastructure that sustains that service. \nThe installation on view\, “Tree Hustler\,” is both a sculptural critique and a functional\, poetic gesture of\nresilience\, acting as an organic continuation of Black Forest—a participatory art and community\nforestry initiative planting trees for Black lives across all 50 states. “Tree Hustler” was motivated by the\nFall 2025 cancellation of a $1.5B urban forestry grant\, which forced Ekene’s practice into survival mode.\nInstead of stopping planting\, he hustles to plant more. The Tree Hustler Coat will be exhibited as a\nsuspended\, living sculpture where a multi-layered forest thrives from within. Photographs will be on\nview\, documenting the artist performing as a street vendor hustling bare-root tree saplings and exotic\nfloras across NYC sites historically synonymous with street vending and Black commerce. \nRehan Miskci (Photography and Digital Imaging Manager\, the Woodman Family Foundation) is a\nmultidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her practice weaves together layers of archive\, photography\,\nand text to reimagine traces lodged within both individual and collective memory. Working with\narchival materials provides Miskci with a unique perspective towards the ontology of an archive: not as\na fixed repository but as something porous and negotiable. Her installations propose that the physical\nmanipulation of photographic forms—layering\, reprinting\, reframing—is a way to imagine alternative\nfutures for the histories that have been only partially recorded. Her cultural heritage as an Armenian\ngrowing up in Turkey reflects in her works as paying attention to gaps\, discrepancies and interruptions\nin archives.\nInspecting how her practice as an artist is informed by her job as a Photography and Digital Imaging\nManager\, Miskci zooms in on the archival documentation devices\, such as a copy stand anda\nscanner—both a tool and a site—which she set up for the foundation where she works and later\nreplicated at her own studio. With these devices\, she performs surgically on the afterlives of\nphotographs\, and highlights the labor required to sustain them. Even though how the machines\nfunction remains consistent between her studio and work\, the intentions of the surgeries performed\ndifferentiate eerily across the two sites\, calling for the often omitted differentiation between labor at\nwork and labor when working for one’s self. \nJiangshengyu Nova Pan (Conservation Technician\, Baltimore Museum of Art) is a moving image and\ninstallation artist who is always in motion. Her works explore the transformations of space\, power\nrelations\, and social networks faced by a mobile population\, often exemplified by the artist’s own\nnomadism. Instead of seeking clarity\, Pan’s worldview centered on blurriness\, and it usually starts with\ntexts that are neither ‘facts’ nor ‘fictions.’\nAs a conservation technician\, Pan’s routine includes using a soft\, small oil-painting brush to sweep dust\nfrom the surfaces of artworks\, which the artist perceives as a quiet form of spatial reorganization on the\nobject’s surface\, depending on exclusion and withdrawal. The video on view depicts one of her\ncolleagues performing a routine sculpture brush-off. When the museum-grade machinery is turned on\,\nthe noise element becomes an invisible warding mechanism for the sculpture\, which has momentarily\nbecome an active site of construction. The objects’ occupation of a space is contingent upon the\nwithdrawal of others\, and so is our access to power. As an artist who is fascinated by the distance\nbetween entities\, Pan\, on this occasion\, compresses the “safe viewing distance” of an artwork by the\nproximity of labor required to maintain it. Other works on view include spatial objects Pan\nreconstructed from the Baltimore Museum of Art’s discard pile\, blowing new life into what was\ntraditionally a lifeless support system for the true masterpieces. \nLuLu Meng (Operations Director\, Residency Unlimited) works across media to explore the interplay\nbetween the individual and the collective in contemporary society. Employing everyday materials\,\ndigital components\, clothing\, drawings\, and photographs\, they create durational installations that\ninvite interaction and reflection. With “Working Conditions\,” their installation invites the viewers to\nattempt a balance. Inspired by the seesaw\, an object that is almost never in balance\, the structure\nseduces with the simplicity of the task\, but offers a harsh reality check once movements are attempted. \nWorking as an integral part of the organizing institution for this residency and exhibition\, Meng’s very\nposition both within and overseeing the exhibition is a simulation of a “working condition\,” for their role\nas an artist and as an administrator is ushered into one site. With this unique perspective\, in\ncollaboration with the curator\, they co-design and co-initiate a working space in the form of an open\noffice that is accessible to the public for everyone to sit down and do some desk work. Thinking about\nthe residency model as a “third space” between artist studios and their final destinations (galleries and\nmuseums)\, this act of relational aesthetics argues for an insertion of utility in “art for art’s sake” when\nlabor is constantly generated and consumed during the process.\nPlease feel free to sit down\, pay some bills\, do your taxes (if you are late)\, brainstorm an idea\, or curate\nyour next show. No credit-giving is required. \nAbout the Curator\nPhil Zheng Cai is a curator and writer based in New York. He graduated from the University of\nWisconsin-Madison with a BA in Social Science\, and received his MA from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He\nhas held posts at Mary Boone Gallery\, Phillips Auctioneers\, and is currently a partner at Eli Klein Gallery.\nCai’s research focuses on systematic critique\, providing recontextualized commentaries following the\ntraditions of institutional critique\, highlighting the non-severability of framework and context.\nCai’s curated exhibitions have received critical acclaim. His curated exhibition “(In)directions: Queernessin Chinese Contemporary Photography” was reviewed by Hyperallergic\, Musee Magazine\, Asian American Arts Alliance AMP Magazine\, and many others. His curated exhibition “Alienation?” was reviewed by the Brooklyn Rail. He has participated in panel discussions and talks at institutions such as\nthe Asia Society Museum New York\, the SCAD Museum of Art\, Columbia University\, Sotheby’s Institute\nof Art\, among others. \nSpecial thanks to curatorial assistant Vu Thien An Nguyen who made this project possible. \nThe 2026 NYC-Based Artist Residency Program is made possible by the New York State Council on the\nArts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is\nsupported\, in part\, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in\npartnership with the City Council.
URL:https://westbeth.org/event/working-conditions-an-art-show-about-how-their-day-jobs-impact-their-artwork/
LOCATION:Westbeth Gallery
CATEGORIES:Featured Events
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