Three Alumni in Group Exhibit, 'Go For Broke'

Jaqueline Cedar ’09 was the curator of the exhibit Go For Broke at the Good Naked Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Featured in the gallery were works by two fellow alumni, Grayson Cox ’10 and Jared Thorne ’10.

Go For Broke was a celebration of the “scrappy and solid” objects we encounter on a daily basis. According to the gallery’s website, “[T]he works in this exhibition are scrappy and solid. Their subjects are resourceful and edgy. Caught in moments of near self-sabotage, they speak to desperation and salvation, getting flung, hitting bottom, and scraping by.”

The gallery describes Cox’s objects as “speak[ing] to productivity and comfort. They talk desire, fulfillment, guilt economy, and mass appeal. Their presentation plays with advertising and their material/size render them impotent/stuck.” Thorne’s photographs, on the other hand, “wait and watch. Their quiet is alarming. His content reveals itself slowly with tenacity and fervor. Rage and defeat sit up against a call to move and act.”

Go For Broke represents the work of five visual artists and two installation artists: Phoebe Berglund, Grayson Cox, Scott Grodesky, Vanessa Gully Santiago, Jared Thorne; and Madeleine Hines and Zebadiah Keneally, respectively.

Some works were placed in unconventional locations around the gallery. For instance, Berglund’s temporary still life “will take form and rest in the freezer sans anchors/supports.” Overall, the descriptions of the works on display at Go For Broke are fascinating: “[Santiago’s] spaces are open and empty. Her objects are useful and rendered useless as figures kick around attempts to repurpose the vacuous and stir/break the system in apathy/disaffect.”

Cedar was born in Los Angeles, CA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In 2009 she received an MFA in painting from Columbia University. She herself is an artist as well as a curator. In an interview with maake magazine, she said “My paintings depict life-size figures interacting amidst abstract fields of shape and color. Unsure of their surroundings, these figures make rote attempts to engage one another both physically and psychologically as their gestures are echoed and amplified by their environment.”

Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston (2016) and 106 Green Gallery, Brooklyn (2014). She has also been included in exhibitions at Lesley Heller Workspace (2016), BAM (2015), DUTTON Gallery (2015), and Brian Morris Gallery (2015). Press includes Huffington Post, New American Paintings, and The Boston Globe.

Go For Broke closed on March 1.