In Conversation: Gabriela Vainsencher and Nicole Kaack

In conversation: Gabriela Vainsencher and Nicole Kaack

Curator Nicole Kaack interviews New Discretions artist Gabriela Vainsencher reflecting on the history of her practice to new works made for Future Fair Online 2020.

New Discretions

On the event of the 2020 Future Fair, artist Gabriela Vainsencher and curator Nicole Kaack discussed the process and ideas behind Vainsencher’s multi-disciplinary practice. Centering their dialogue in an array of work incorporating photography, drawing, and sculpture, Vainsencher and Kaack discuss concepts as varied as material history, index, and time.

ABOUT GABRIELA VAINSENCHER
Gabriela Vainsencher was born in Buenos Aires, raised in Tel Aviv, and currently lives in Brooklyn. She received her MFA from Hunter College in 2016. Past solo and two-person exhibitions include CRUSH Curatorial gallery, NY, NY, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Hanina Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, France; Parker’s Box Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; NurtureArt, NY; and La Chambre Blanche, Québec City, Canada. Her work has been included in group exhibitions including Bergamo Modern and Contemporary Art, Italy; Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway; Pierogi gallery, Brooklyn, NY, The Freies Museum, Berlin and The National Gallery of Saskatchewan, Canada. Residencies include Yaddo, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, Byrdcliffe Artist Residency, Woodstock (USA), Triangle Arts Association (France), and La Chambre Blanche (Canada).

ABOUT NICOLE KAACK
Nicole Kaack is an independent curator and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Kaack's writing has been published by Whitehot Magazine, artcritical, Art Viewer, SFAQ / NYAQ / AQ, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, and Sound American. She has also contributed texts to I will set a stage for you (HOLOHOLO, 2019), Recto / Verso (Hauser & Wirth, 2018), and has edited collections including Twelve Month CRUSH (HESSE FLATOW, 2020). Kaack has organized exhibitions and programs at Small Editions, the Re: Art Show, CRUSH CURATORIAL, NURTUREart, Assembly Room, The Kitchen, Hunter College, and HESSE FLATOW. Kaack's projects include of missing out, prompt:, and Not Nothing. She is Associate Director at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn.

“The way I know that a piece is done is when I know that it stops looking like a jumble and suddenly looks like something.

Not necessarily that I’ve built a new object out of disparate pieces but that suddenly there’s a new presence”

GABRIELA VAINSENCHER

“THE QUESTIONS THAT I AM INTERESTED IN NOW AND COME BACK TO IN EVERYTHING I MAKE:

How does a material or a person or a person’s voice carry on itself the history of what has happened to it or to her?

How are we basically a sum or our experiences?”

GABRIELA VAINSENCHER

“These sculptures are a sum of their experiences.

They tell the story of what happened to them:

I buckled here, then I cracked there, and I have a bulge right here, and I chipped right there.

But I made it.”

GABRIELA VAINSENCHER

“There is an effort to create immortality and an effort to create something that outlasts…

I think with a lot of the materials it is often things that are in ‘lived use’, or at least have more daily or ritual functions.”

NICOLE KAACK ON GABRIELA VAINSENCHER

Gabriela Vainsencher Amphora, Ears, Slit Neck, 2018 Porcelain and underglaze 6 x 9 x 14 in (15.2 x 22.9 x 35.6 cm) Courtesy of New Discretions and the Artist — Gabriela Vainsencher
*Amphora, Ears, Slit Neck*, 2018
Porcelain and underglaze
6 x 9 x 14 in (15.2 x 22.9 x 35.6 cm)
Courtesy of New Discretions and the Artist

“I wanted to make these things where they are in a precarious situation

and they are flimsy, and they are very small, and they are very pathetic,

but they can do it — they can make it.”

GABRIELA VAINSENCHER

Rebeca LaliberteAugust 14, 2020