Western Exhibitions is thrilled to be participating in the inaugural in-person Future Fair, to be held September 9-12 at the Starret-Lehigh Building in the Chelsea neighbourhood of New York City, with a solo presentation of new semi-abstract works on paper by American Artist, Deb Sokolow. We will be sharing a space with Tatjana Pieters of Ghent, Belgium, who are showing the Dutch artist Anneke Eussen.
Deb Sokolow’s semi-abstract schematic drawings focus on the idiosyncratic aspects of (mostly) fictitious built environments while hinting at the concealed agendas and social engineering involved in the design and use of corporate, institutional and domestic architecture.
Sokolow’s two-and-a-half-dimensional, maquette-like pieces include geometric shapes and saturated fields of color representing landscape architecture, floor plans and shifting walls. Some of these forms appear to be reproduced with a blueprint or printmaking process. Instead, they are hand-rendered with colored pencils and crayons and function as a conceptual compliment to their titles in that they also contain uncertainties with regard to the fabrication of content.
Titles such as “Visualizing the Right Angle Attempting to Dominate the Future of Architecture” and “Advanced Techniques for Scent Use in Office Complexes” take inspiration from the power dynamics of various office environments Sokolow has worked in, the layout of museum spaces, the god-complex of architects, authors of postmodern literature such as Jorge Luis Borges and Helen Oyeyemi and a 2005 encounter with a ghost in the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California (and lingering doubts as to whether it was an actual ghost or a bit of staged theatre).
Deb Sokolow is an artist and writer. Her drawings and artists’ books have been included in the 4th Athens Biennale in Greece and in other group exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., The Drawing Center in New York; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen in Germany; Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands; and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Solo exhibitions include the Abrons Art Center in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City; Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in which Sokolow’s 2013 MATRIX exhibition, Some Concerns About the Candidate, was reviewed in the New York Times. Her work has been reproduced for Creative Time’s Comics project; the 2017 Best American Comics; for Swedish art magazine, Paletten; in Vitamin D2, a survey on contemporary drawing; and in a several-page spread in the fall 2018 issue of BOMB Magazine. Her 2019 solo show at Western Exhibitions was reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail by Elizabeth Buhe and John Yau reviewed her 2016 solo show in Hyperallergic.
Sokolow’s work is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in Indiana; and the Thomas J Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Sokolow is a recipient of an Artadia award and residencies at Art Omi and Nordic Artists’ Centre in Norway. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She is represented by Western Exhibitions and lives and works in Chicago.
Future Fair 2021
The Starrett-Lehigh Building
600 W 27th St. New York, NY 10001
Western Exhibitions is in Room R2
Visit The Future Fair’s site here.
Visit Deb Sokolow’s page here.
Read an article about Future Fair in Hypebeast here.
Preview our booth (PDF)
Below is the schedule: