Brooklyn Commons, a new discussion series beginning this fall at ISCP, presents intellectual and artistic pairings between the established Brooklyn-based artist community and ISCP residents. This series puts artists in conversation who have not shared a dialogue in the past and focuses on the vibrant and diverse cultural practitioners living and working in Brooklyn, both long-term and short-term.

Josiah McElheny and Camille Henrot will discuss historical narratives and conceptual gestures that can be generated through craft making and objects. McElheny’s highly detailed and finely made glass objects often reflect cultural meaning and memory, taking the form of “historical fiction”—which he offers to the viewer to believe or not. Henrot’s impure, hybrid objects cast doubt upon the linear and partitioned transcription of Western history and highlight its borrowings and grey areas. In her series of sculptures Endangered Species, Henrot has created objects inspired by African art by using pieces from car engines, these slender silhouettes with zoomorphic allure make reference to the migration of symbols as well as to the economic circulation of objects.

Josiah McElheny is an artist best known for his handmade glass objects combined with photographs, text, and museological displays. Whether recreating miraculous glass objects pictured in Renaissance paintings or modernized versions of non-extant glassware from documentary photographs, McElheny’s work takes the object, idea, and social nexus of glass as its subject. McElheny’s work has been exhibited internationally including MoMA in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, White Cube in London, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. In 2006, he was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program.

Camille Henrot is a French artist based in Paris and in New York. Her work has been exhibited in France at the Centre Pompidou, Paris Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, Jeu de Paume, Cartier Foundation, Louis Vuitton CulturalSpace, and Foundation Maeght, and abroad at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Sculpture Center in New York, Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Center for Contemporary Images in Geneva, Hara Museum in Tokyo and OiFuturo Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro. Her films have been shown at Views from the avant-garde in the New York Film Festival, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in the Cannes Festival, International Festival of Rotterdam, RIDM of Montreal and the Festival Hors Pistes of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2010, Camille Henrot was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, and in 2013 she will be a recipient of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC.

Brooklyn Commons is organized by Kari Conte, ISCP Director of Programs and Exhibitions.