He Said I Thought
Carol Szymanski
Performance Dates:
Friday, October 25, 7:00pm
Sunday, October 27, 7:00pm
Friday, November 8, 7:00pm
Friday, November 8, 8:30pm
Sunday, November 10, 7:00pm
signs and symbols is pleased to present He Said I Thought, a 55-minute live performance conceived and directed by New York based artist Carol Szymanski, coinciding with her solo exhibition of the same name. This marks the debut of the artist’s most substantial performance work to date.
Featuring 12 live and recorded performers, He Said I Thought is a sharp yet nuanced rumination on acquiescence and ambivalence in gender relations after post-feminism and before #MeToo. The installation of her concurrent exhibtion acts as the stage, featuring wallpaper from the index of her book cockshut dummy and an 8-channel video. The 'characters' are embodied by seven suits — Valentino, D&G, Marni, McQueen, Sander, Yamamoto and Galliano — once worn by the artist while working as a banker in the late 1990s, representing both an homage to the suit as a uniform identity as well as a critique of the banking culture and its lack of transparency.
He Said I Thought evolved out of Acquiescence, an artist book Szymanski made in collaboration with Book Works in London in 2007. As this topic is so extremely pertinent now, she has decided to present it to the public for the first time.
The artist would like to thank the following performers:
David Cohen, Janice Guy, Joan Jonas (recorded), Simone Kearney, Kalup Linzy (recorded), Canning Robb, Kasenia Saager, Barry Schwabsky, Sophie Seita, Lane Shiotayonii, Andrea Velascoa and Claire Zakiewicz
*RSVP is required for the performances due to our intimate setting. Please e-mail info@signsandsymbols.art to reserve a seat.
carol szymanski’s art spans many media, from sculpture and painting to video and performance. She has become particularly known for a series of sculptures in the form of invented musical instruments, and particularly brass horns, that she has been making since 1993. Szymanski was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Whitney Museum Studio Program, and lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Recent solo and collaborative exhibitions include Pareidolia, Totah Gallery, New York, NY, 2018; The Phonemophonic Alphabet Brass Band, Winter Garden, New York, NY, 2017 curated by John Schaefer WNYC New Sounds Live Series and “Emergency Eyewash” (with Barry Schwabsky), Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York, NY 2017; “A Distance as Close as It Can Be,” Elga Wimmer PCC, New York, NY 2016; “My Life is an Index,” Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York, NY 2015; and “Pissing Against the Wind, or, Sketches on the Mental Drain on the Dead Banker,” Guided by Invoices, New York, NY 2012, which have received press attention in Artcritical, Art Press, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Time Out New York. Between 2004 and 2014 she produced an email project, cockshut dummy, combining writing and images, excerpts from which have been republished in the art and literary periodicals including Atlantica and Vanitas as well as publishing cockshut offshoots, a 4-book series with Book Works, London. Space Sisters Press will publish cockshut dummy in 2020. She has been a recipient of numerous awards including the Rome Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Szymanski has collaborated with numerous composers and musicians including Ben Neill, Ekmeles Ensemble, Betsy McClelland, Dewey Redman, and Wadada Leo Smith. In April 2020, she will present a project at the Park Avenue Armory with Jaimie Branch, curated by Jason Moran.
