THE ARMORY SHOW
RACHEL MICA WEISS
BOOTH P17 | THE JAVITS CENTER, NEW YORK
ON VIEW SEPTEMBER 5—8, 2024
CARVALHO PARK announces its inaugural participation with The Armory Show with New York-based sculptor, Rachel Mica Weiss. The fair’s presentation of six new sculptures marks the debut of an ambitious body of work, shown in tandem with Weiss’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Cyclicalities, from September 19 to November 2, at CARVALHO PARK’s newly expanded gallery at 112 Waterbury Street in Brooklyn. Art historian Elizabeth Buhe’s accompanying texts illuminate the concurrent programs. In addition to a set of meticulously hand-carved marble necklaces clinched with locks and keys, and apparition-like shrouds of alabaster chainmail – of her Protector series – Weiss introduces a series of figurally-scaled cast concrete sculptures with kinetic elements, titled In Time. Each sculpture in the In Time trio (two mates will be shown in the gallery exhibition) contains two rotating marble spheres. Both in and out of sync with each other, the spheres spin at different speeds and directions inside
their hosts.
Weiss’s sculpture addresses boundaries, surfaces, and their perceived perforations. Chainmail is meant to protect one’s body, and locks are intended to hold a barrier together in order to keep something in or out. Fundamentally, these concerns are about bodily autonomy, erecting a boundary between oneself and others, and establishing a hierarchy between “me” and “you” or “us” and “them.” Historically, those who had the power to wield keys or swords were men. They used their voices prudently and in moderation compared to women, who could supposedly not control their vocal eruptions, and whose imprisonment would secure the dominant order. Even our terminology suggests this. The Old English word for man, wǣp(n)man, closely relates to the word for weapon, wǣpn, while the prefix wīf- refers to a woman, correlating social roles with language.
As barriers, Weiss’s sculptures are ineffective, however, suggesting the error of these historical tropes. In a new development, the artist has begun to disrupt the fixed logic of uniform repetition. Instead of allowing her chain links to follow one another uninterrupted, here Weiss introduces intentional gaps; the barrier leaks. Look at Protector III (Hood), with its empty face, or Protector II (Shroud), whose lower registers begin to unravel. Similarly, the green marble necklace How to Pass Through to the Other Side? is bolted at the bottom by five padlocks strung together like a temporary solution until a more secure lock can be found. If historically men have viewed women as leaky and hence in need of being contained, Weiss lauds a model of porosity.
This logic of destructuring though perforation is carried through in In Time III, a hulking meteor covered in irregular surface craters. By embedding her marble spheres directly into the rock’s irregular pits, Weiss accentuates those indentations’ non-formulaic character, which bear no trace of humans’ tendency to regulate nature. What is more, Weiss explodes the reach of her inquiry with the In Time series: individual bodies and their gendering give way to larger questions about our place in the universe. For not only does the central meteor act as a vertical axis around which the spheres rotate, Weiss has also placed In Time III in the center of the booth so that her other works orbit around it. The scope is not just interpersonal, but cosmic and temporal. Like the paradigm shift that occurred when Nicolaus Copernicus posited the sun rather than Earth as the center of the universe, Weiss’s work points to a fundamental de-centering of the whole, superior self.
In their abstraction, Weiss’s three sculptural series evoke gender and other conditions of embodiment without presupposing them, and in this way remain open to a range of experiences like pregnancy, identifying as part of a group, or erecting psychological barriers around ourselves. That these experiences confirm the fallacy of the self as unified and closed demonstrates one way that Weiss’s works gradually unravel, as well as re-knit, how we understand ourselves.
Rachel Mica Weiss (b. 1986, Maryland) is a sculptor and installation artist based in Upstate New York. Her work reconstitutes various boundaries—architectural, topographical, and psychological—to demonstrate their impact upon us. Her sculptures, often scaled to the human body, combine the visual language of textiles with the density of stone and cast forms—components that balance uneasily, vie for dominance, or are inextricably intertwined. Weiss’s work draws attention to the constraints within our physical and psychological spaces, asking us to reimagine those so-called barriers as flexible, passable, porous.
Weiss earned a BA in psychology from Oberlin College and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been the subject of nine solo exhibitions at the following: CARVALHO PARK, New York (2024; forthcoming); Here, Pittsburgh (2022–23); Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (2019); Lux Art Institute, San Diego (2018); LMAK Gallery, New York (2018, 2017); Montserrat College of Art, Beverly (2015); Fridman Gallery, New York (2014); and the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco (2013). Weiss’ first institutional commission was The Wild Within (2020), at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Her largest permanent installation to date, Boundless Topographies, funded by the Gates Foundation, is installed at the University of Washington’s Hans Rosling Center for Population Health in Seattle, Washington. Weiss’ work is included in the public collections of the US Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Microsoft Corporate Collection; Boston Consulting Group Corporate Collection; Media Math Corporate Collection; Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center, Google, as well as the collections of Francis J. Greenberger and Beth Rudin DeWoody.
CARVALHO PARK. A synthesis of the directors’ backgrounds in performing arts (Carvalho) + architecture (Park) informs a distinct point-of-view that shapes the gallery’s cross-disciplinary program, privileging the sensorial experience of the art object and space. CARVALHO PARK features international emerging and mid-career artists whose practices reconsider the distinctions of increasingly fluid categorization – of the visual art, performing art, and craft realms, through meticulous dedication to materials and process. Exhibitions work to activate the viewer’s environment, expanding space for engagement and discourse between disciplines.
At the close of 2023, CARVALHO PARK expanded its galleries into the adjacent building at 110 Waterbury Street in Brooklyn, doubling its exhibition space and program, on the cusp of its five-year anniversary. The new gallery focuses on sculpture, installation, and performance, echoing the founders' foundations. CARVALHO PARK is a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance.