
On View: January 10-January 21
The Kitchen at Westbeth (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft)
Time:
Gallery Hours: January 10–12 and January 17–20, 4:30-8:30pm; January 13, 4:30-6:30pm. Free. Panel Discussion: January 13, 3-4:30pm. Free with RSVP. Reservations forthcoming
J Jan Groeneboer's new multi-channel video installation Selected Views takes the singular view from the artist’s studio in Brooklyn as a starting point for a durational study of the politics of viewership.
To create this work, Groeneboer undertook over three years of preparatory research, photography, and writing about the view, after which he began a daily practice of filming over the subsequent two-and-a-half years. By training his attention on the unfolding repetitions and rhythms of weather and industries, the artist creates space in Selected Views to reflect on how elements of the cityscape indicate relationships between democracy, global capitalism, the prison-industrial complex, and environmental crises. Conceived as a site-specific video installation for The Kitchen’s loft at Westbeth—a setting defined by a row of windows overlooking the Hudson River—Selected Views highlights the interconnections between the waterway visible outside the gallery and the bays that are central to the artist’s own view.
In tandem with the installation, Groeneboer will convene a panel discussion on January 13 exploring themes and processes that are central to Selected Views, such as observational practices in contemporary art, the ethics of looking, and the role of public monuments. Panelists include artist and scholar Malik Gaines; artist Zoe Leonard; and cellist, artist, and writer Ethan Philbrick.
J Jan Groeneboer: Selected Views is organized by Alison Burstein, Curator.
BIO
J Jan Groeneboer is a transgender conceptual interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. In his visual practice, he investigates how representation and abstraction connect to different forms of visibility, legibility, and comprehension. Groeneboer often works in abstraction to address the politics of representation. He developed this strategy to examine the expectation that transgendered people be readily available for visual scrutiny. Groeneboer’s work has shown at David Zwirner Gallery (2018), Boston University Galleries (2017), MoMA (2016), Art in General (2016), the Queens Museum (2016), CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (2016), MoMA PS1 (2015), Contemporary Art Museum Houston (2015), Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts in Winnipeg (2015), Andrew Edlin Gallery (2013), Shoshawna Wayne Gallery (2010), and Exile, Berlin (2010), among others. Essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Art21.com, Mute Magazine, Artforum.com, Temporary Art Review, Art Journal, and in the essay in Pink Labour on Golden Streets, “Appearing Differently: Abstraction’s Transgender and Queer Capacities.” David Getsy’s 2016 essay “Seeing Commitments: Jonah Groeneboer’s Ethics of Discernment” was included in the “Opacities” section of Getsy and Che Gosset’s “A Syllabus on Transgender and Nonbinary Methods for Art and Art History” (Art Journal, Winter 2021). Residencies include Ox-Bow School of Art, the Fire Island Artist Residency, and Recess. He has received travel and/or project grants from Canada Council for the Arts in 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022. As a writer, Groeneboer has participated in numerous panels and symposiums, and his recent essays on transgender representation were published in Texte Zur Kunst (2023) and in the Studies in Gender and Sexuality (2023).
FUNDING SUPPORT & CREDITS
The Kitchen’s programs are made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, The Kitchen Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council, as well as through generous support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Inc., Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Open Society Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, Ruth Foundation For The Arts, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Simons Foundation, and Teiger Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.