Carol Szymanski
born in Charlotte, North Carolina
lives and works in New York

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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 shaped from the alphabet, 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. Recent solo and collaborative exhibitions include You Pair How, signs and symbols, New York (2022); He Said, I Thought, signs and symbols, New York (2019); Pareidolia, Totah Gallery, New York (2018); The Phonemophonic Alphabet Brass Band, Winter Garden, New York (2017) curated by John Schaefer, WNYC New Sounds Live Series; Emergency Eyewash with Barry Schwabsky, Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York (2017); A Distance as Close as It Can Be, Elga Wimmer PCC, New York (2016); My Life is an Index, Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York (2015); and Pissing Against the Wind, or, Sketches on the Mental Drain on the Dead Banker, Guided by Invoices, New York (2012), which have received press attention in Artcritical, Art Press, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and Time Out New York. 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.

Between 2004 and 2014, Szymanski 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. An artist book dedicated to cockshut dummy, published by Space Sisters Press, is forthcoming.

Since 2020, Szymanski has organized an ongoing project called the go-between, a participatory performance exploring the traditional art of matchmaking. Recently, in the fall of 2021, Szymanski also presented the performance Phonemophonic Alphabet Brass Band with avant-garde trumpeter, jaimie branch, at Park Avenue Armory. From September through December 2022, Szymanski is included in the group exhibition Singing in Unison: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, Part Seven, a Brooklyn Rail Curatorial Project curated by Phong H. Bui and Cal McKeever.