Special Projects Winter 1999 - Laura Stein, Hiroshi Sunairi, and Ericka Beckman

The Special Projects Program, located in the south wing of P.S.1.’s second floor, showcases the work of artists distinguished by the site-specific, process-oriented or audience-oriented nature of their practice. Twelve artists each year have the chance to develop and showcase a project in a former studio space, working and exhibiting over the course of three months. Artists will be working with doors regularly open to the public. The Special Projects Program adds a casual and personal opportunity for exchange, education and audience involvement.

Laura Stein explores the disparate incarnations of outer and inner spaces. Her recent projects include a series of clear acrylic plants and animals encapsulating other life forms. In the past she has transmogrified vegetation through grafting and molding processes. Stein’s “studio lab” installation is a "teaser." It opened on December 19th and set the stage for Aim to Please, an interactive project in which Stein engages visitors in a filmed dialogue. Hiroshi Sunairi has been seducing New York audiences for years. In a project entitled, Early—Hiroshi, Sunairi couples sexual discovery with the discovery of latent geometry in the body. Elements of his installation such as the floor tiles and folding screen are furtively formalist in nature. It is through the abstracted wonderment of a primal “check-out” stare that we come to the formalism of TOKIMEKI. On December 19 Sunari performed TOKIMEKI, in which audience members searched P.S.1. for denim letters in anticipation of Sunarai’s message.

Ericka Beckman has shown her work throughout Europe and the U.S. since the 1980s and is known internationally for her experimental use of gaming as a cinematic device. Beginning in January 2000, Beckman will screen her 30-minute film, HIATUS, the story of a young woman whose on-line identity as a cyber cowgirl draws her into a collision course with WANG, a “powerful take-over artist” bent on separating our heroine from her organic memory.

Laura Stein, Hiroshi Sunairi, Ericka Beckman
Special Projects Winter 1999