Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works is reopening with powerful art and performance
After more than a year of significant construction, nonprofit cultural arts center Pioneer Works is opening its doors in Red Hook once again. The artist- and scientist-led Brooklyn organization will mark its return with a suite of visual and performing arts experiences.
The reopening events, including solo exhibitions by Alejandro García Contreras and Le’Andra LeSeur, kick off on Friday, September 6 with an annual gala set to return on October 8.
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This Red Hook non-profit, founded in 2012 by artist Dustin Yellin, occupies a warehouse dating from 1866, that was once home to one of the country’s largest ironworks. Inside the building, expect to see noticeable upgrades, including an accessible pathway in the garden, additional restrooms, structural steel beams to support a future roof deck, a new elevator that will reach all three floors plus the roof, and design and architectural work for the observatory. There’s also an upgraded central HVAC system, so you’ll even feel the difference.
To welcome the public back, Pioneer Works is hosting several powerful exhibitions. First, they’ll simultaneously open “Alejandro García Contreras: Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo? (Who hasn’t tried to turn a stone into a memory?)” and “Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal.” Both begin on September 6 and run through December 15.
Contreras is a Mexican artist known for his elaborate sculptures that cross-pollinate wide-ranging interests, from popular culture and eroticism to global art history and the occult. Inspired by the notion of an archeological site left behind by an unknown, ancient civilization, the exhibition blends ceramics, concrete pouring, photography, and experimental video. The artist even created some work on-site at Pioneer Works. This is his institutional solo debut.
As for LeSeur, she dissects the way that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. She explores how these legacies manifest in the physical body, especially when presented with, and situated in, the sonic rhythms that reverberate across these sites of violence. She specifically features Stone Mountain, a public park in Georgia known for its three-acre-wide carving of Confederate leaders. This is also her first institutional solo presentation in New York.
Joining the visual art, Pioneer Works will unveil a new performance commission by Narcissister on September 14 and 15. This New York-based performance artist is known to blends humor, fetish and social commentary. Their work, Titled Voyage Into Infinity, features a cast of live performers who trigger, participate in and bear witness to an assortment of physical feats, chemical reactions, lo-fi magic tricks and indoor pyrotechnics. The project marks the artist’s first large-scale performance commission in over ten years.
The popular Second Sundays series, a free monthly open house with exhibitions, workshops, music and food, resumes on September 8.