Shannon Ebner. A Public Character

About

The exhibition begins with a dramatic presentation of works from Ebner’s ongoing series “Black Box Collision A” which, since 2012, has seen the artist photograph the letter “A” mined from the vestiges of signs, advertisements, messages, and other modes of visual communication.

The exhibition also traces the artist’s efforts to re-insert her typographical imagery into the public realm, notably through A HUDSON YARD, a collaborative project with David Reinfurt. A PUBLIC CHARACTER, a new video by the artist, edited by Erika Vogt and scored by Alex Waterman, creates a physical and optical experience of those images’ dynamic lives amidst the Chelsea and Meatpacking District neighborhoods of New York as they rapidly develop. Ebner’s physical constructions of language are made physically manifest by a new sculpture depicting the letter “A.” As the first museum exhibition to survey Ebner’s “Black Box Collision A” series, A Public Characterdemonstrates the artist’s efforts to build a catalogue of images, and reflect on the unstable nature of such an archive.

The exhibition underscores Ebner’s self-reflexive approach to the image through language and architecture. Also on view is a selection from Ebner’s “Auto Body Collision” project. Photographs from the last three years attempt to establish connections between the auto, motive, body and collision as encountered in the world, exploring themes related to the circulatory, the network, the performative and its relationship to the body, both as an automated entity and as a means of auto or self-expressive. Taken as a whole, the works in this exhibition involve the principle of “collision”; artist and viewer alike are confronted with the experience of treating photography as a language to be read, seen and experienced.

A final group of works source vernacular language from auto body collision centers to highlight the relationships between image, body and the self—as in A SELF.

About Shannon Ebner
Shannon Ebner was born in Englewood, New Jersey in 1971 and lives and works in Los Angeles. She earned her BA from Bard College in 1993 and her MFA from Yale University in 2000 and she currently teaches at USC’s Roski School of Fine Arts. Solo exhibitions include kaufmann repetto, Milan (2010); Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2010); Wallspace, New York (2009, 2007, 2005); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City (2007).

This exhibition is made possible in part through a generous gift from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Major support provided by Ray Ellen and Allan Yarkin. Additional support provided by kaufmann repetto, Sadie Coles HQ, and Altman Siegel.