Asya Geisberg Gallery is pleased to pair Mira Dancy and Sarah Peters in “BODYRITE”, an exhibition of paintings and sculpture. The duo’s seemingly opposite oeuvres - acid-hued graphic paintings and terracotta miniatures - award us with the possibilities of reimagining the female body as a series of poses, affects, or mere outlines. With a clear nod to millennia of reliance on the female nude, the two artists share an au courant appreciation of its descent into a signifier. Peters, whose work has revived traditional media such as bronze portraiture, plaster casts, and drawing, consistently reframes the history of European sculpture by revising the well-worn catalog of traditional model poses. In so doing, her small sculptures acknowledge the decorative tradition of Elie Nadelman, the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau, the androgyny of Michelangelo, or the manicured daintiness of porcelain. Nonetheless, the individuality, awkwardness, or unfinished nature of each figure disrupts the notion that all the bathers, frolickers, goddesses, and erotic idols are merely objects to be fondled by the owner’s hand. Mira Dancy’s paintings similarly view the female nude as a handed-down convention that bombards our visual sphere, encompassing truck décor, advertising, and shop signage. Her paintings wed the gaudy cheapness of a nail salon’s disembodied hand with repeated brutal brush-stroked curves that erase any individuality or naturalism. In Dancy’s world, the idea of woman exists as a cipher for other referents, a hieroglyph to be universally understood as something else: pleasure, commerce, entertainment. Loud and confusing, her works counter the contemplative interiority of Peters’ sculptures. In reaching back to ancient representations to deliver an eerily clear articulation of now-ness, these artists insist on a muddled reverence for our traditions, wanly off-kilter in the case of Peters, or corrupted and anarchic in Dancy’s works.
Mira Dancy received her MFA from Columbia University in 2009, and her BA from Bard College in 2001. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include Night Gallery, Los Angeles, Kansas, NY, and Knowmoregames, NY. Recently her work has been included in shows at Zach Feuer, NY, The Suzanne Geiss Company, NY, Cooper Cole, Toronto, David Shelton, Houston, Thierry Goldberg, NY, and the Metropolitan Art Society in Beirut, Lebanon. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, Time Out New York, and Whitehot Magazine, and will be featured in the upcoming issue of The Third Rail. Mira lives and works in New York.
Sarah Peters received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and her BFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Solo and two-person exhibitions include Winkleman Gallery, NY, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, and PS122 Gallery, NY. Group exhibitions include Regina Rex, NY, Dodge Gallery, NY, MKG127 Gallery, Toronto, and The Front Gallery, New Orleans. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art F City, The Paris Review Daily, The L Magazine, and The Atlantic. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Sculpture Fellowship recipient, a Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Grant recipient, and has completed residencies at The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Kohler Arts/Industry Residency, and Pilchuck Glass School. She lives and works in New York.