"Later in Life" at Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

My new piece “Later in Life” is now on view at Skirball Cultural Center through next spring, 2025.

“Later in Life,” 2024
8 channel 4K video, 33:21 min, color, sound.

ABOUT: Visual artist and filmmaker Sabrina Gschwandtner’s multi-screen video installation presents six Los Angeles adults who reflect upon their B’nai Mitzvah. “Later in Life” asks what it means to embark upon a Jewish coming of age ritual - traditionally performed at age 13 - as an adult.
Gschwandtner, who is both one of the subjects featured in the work and its director, composed the 8 channel video from personal stories and footage of local Los Angeles synagogue architecture and design, revealing the diverse nature of contemporary Jewish experience.

Featuring: Ya’akov Ronnie Britton, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Geoff Martin, Shanti Reinhardt, Joyce Rubin, and Joey Soloway.

Director: Sabrina Gschwandtner
Producers: Sabrina Gschwandtner, Jason Spingarn-Koff
Editor: Kevin Jones
Director of Photography: Jenni Morello
Assistant Editor: Talia Mindich
Assistant Camera: Lea Salanon
Sound: Omar Barraza
Gaffer: Trey Betts
PA: Gabi Marler
Hair & makeup: Nichole Servin
Colorist: Jamie LeJeune/Cinedocs
Sound mix: IMRSV

Archival footage and photography: Liz Collins, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Shanti Reinhardt, Joey Soloway, Wilshire Boulevard Temple Los Angeles

Additional participants: Debra Azar, Rabbi Mari Chernow, Rabbi Calvin Dox-DaCosta, Sally Dworsky, Rina Etkes, Cantorial Soloist Shelly Fox, Rabbi Susan Goldberg, Cantor Don Gurney, Ari Herstand, Jul Vann Levine, Rabbi Susan Nanus, Duvid Swirsky

Special thanks: Erin Wright

"Implicit Explicit" at Hauser & Wirth Feb 27 - April 7, 2024 /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

Hauser & Wirth is pleased to mark the sixth anniversary of its UK-based contemporary craft gallery Make Hauser & Wirth with ‘Implicit Explicit,’ its first Los Angeles presentation, on view at the gallery’s Downtown Arts District complex from 27 February through 7 April 2024.

This exhibition will showcase works by four American artists whose practices encourage thoughtful consideration of our perceptions of and assumptions about craft. The participating artists—Joe Feddersen, Keiko Fukazawa, Sabrina Gschwandtner and Shari Mendelson—share a predilection for combining materials and imagery in ways that overtly challenge some of the established hierarchies of materials and processes most often associated with the handmade. For example, in ‘Untitled (Arts and Crafts Hands at Work)’ (2017), Sabrina Gschwandtner physically stitches together archival film footage using traditional quilt patterns. The result is an exquisite—and quite literal—tapestry of Gschwandtner’s exploratory approach to filmmaking. In Joe Feddersen’s work, the artist intricately weaves contemporary symbols of urban life, such as traffic signs and high voltage towers, into waxed linen baskets or uses them as motifs on his blown glass vessels. This seamless integration of techniques and imagery from both the past and the present adds depth to his work, introducing an unexpected dynamism to traditional practice.

As the title alludes, the territory between implied notions and explicit expressions of craft is rich for investigation. Each of the four artists in ‘Implicit Explicit’ cleaves to the inherent characteristics of craft by engaging with a traditionally craft-associated technique or material. Equally, each artist uses his or her work to focus upon both the historical application of a craft practice or medium, and the wider context of contemporary artmaking, culture and imagery. The resulting dialogues that exist within and among the works on view will underscore Make Hauser & Wirth’s commitment to showcasing the achievements of exceptional makers and activating critical thinking about how craft is defined and how it impacts our world.

‘Implicit Explicit’ was conceived and curated by Meaghan Roddy, in collaboration with Make Hauser & Wirth.

Recent aquisition /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

The Walker Art Center has acquired a large scale, black and white film quilt for their permanent collection.

The piece will be on view there in the following exhibition:

Motion Capture: Recent Acquisitions in Media and Performance


Feb 29–Aug 25, 2024

Featuring a selection of works added to the Walker’s collection since 2020, Motion Capture offers a compelling look at ways that artists make performance and dance central to their work in video, film, painting, sculpture, and drawing. Borrowing its title from the imaging technique that digitally registers motion, the presentation explores unexpected effects that can result when different art forms converge. Artists in this exhibition translate dance into 3D animations, sculptures, quilted collages, and other forms, manipulating time and perception in the process.

More info here

"Lust Severs" /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

“Lust Severs”

Thoma Foundation Art Vault

Santa Fe, NM

May 1 - August 4, 2023

“Lust Severs” explores functional and experiential aspects of technology. Guest curated by pioneering film artist Jennifer West, this exhibition interrogates how the digital tools and physical materiality of technology mediate both bodily sensations and mental conceptions of the world around us. Playing to the often-discomfiting collision of the human body, culture, and technology, the title of the exhibition is taken from an auto-correct mistake that changed “list servers” to “lust severs” in an email chain. Spanning from the 1960s to the present, artworks displayed in the exhibition employ digital and analog video, LED sculpture, flatscreens, sculpture, computer-generated imagery, projection, and mixed media.

FEATURED ARTISTS
LaTurbo Avedon, Dara Birnbaum, Jim Campbell, Sarah Frost, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Desmond Paul Henry, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Cara Romero, Elias Sime, Cauleen Smith, Anne Spalter, Stan VanDerBeek, Carrie Mae Weems, Jennifer West, Saya Woolfalk


"Magic Hour" /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

“Magic Hour: Intersections of Contemporary Film and Fiber Art”

Saint Kate

Milkwaukee, Wi

May 5 - September 11, 2023

“Magic Hour: Intersections of Contemporary Film and Fiber Art” features three artists working at the nexus of film and fiber. Holly Wong, Sabrina Gschwandtner, and Jennifer West recast film as fabric that can be stitched, layered, or manipulated. The presence of the artist’s hand and an attention to the process of making is clear in each artist’s work as they explore the physicality of the material and its sweeping cinematic potential, and as a result ultimately expand our understanding of these two closely related mediums.

"Social Fabric" exhibition /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

“Social Fabric”

Newport Art Museum

Newport, RI

December 3, 2022 - June 11, 2023

From the cradle to the grave, human beings are wrapped in, and surrounded by textiles. What people make to clothe, protect, and decorate themselves and their spaces, tells us about their cultures, eras, identities, families, and lives. This exhibition brings together a diverse array of contemporary textile artists who are weavers, sculptors, quiltmakers, and visionaries to examine the complex issues of our time. Together, their practices demonstrate and reimagine the expressive and social functions of textiles. Some of the themes include: climate change and sustainability, adaptation and reuse, war and survival, human rights and social justice, the reclamation of history, the reaffirmation and celebration of communities, and gender, ethnic, and racial identities.

The artists in this exhibition take on the challenges of a variety of materials, pushing textiles in new directions and seeing how far they can go. Through textiles, they inspire new conversations about contemporary issues.

Featured artists include: Jim Arendt, Elizabeth Duffy, Brooke Erin Goldstein, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Letitia Huckaby, Tamara Kostianovsky, Jesse Krimes, Dinh Q. Lê, Aubrey Longley-Cook, Veronica Mays, Alison Saar, Marie Watt, Emma Welty, Nafis M. White, and more.

"Message from Our Planet" exhibition /  by Sabrina Gschwandtner

Message from Our Planet is a new media exhibition that brings together 20 software, video, and light-technology artworks from 19 international artists and artist groups working at the forefront of digital and electronic art, which opened October 1, 2022 at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa.  

Message from Our Planet is curated around the idea that media technologies―from vintage devices to cutting-edge digital algorithms―offer distinct ways for artists to communicate with future generations, encapsulating the artifacts and ambitions of contemporary society.  

Exhibiting artists include: Brian Bress, Lia Chaia, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Hong Hao, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Claudia Hart, Jenny Holzer, Eduardo Kac, Lee Nam Lee, Christian Marclay, Paul Pfeiffer, Tabita Rezaire, Michal Rovner, Jason Salavon, Elias Sime, Skawennati, Penelope Umbrico, United Visual Artists, and Robert Wilson. 

Exhibition tour schedule: Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA, October 1, 2022–December 31, 2022; Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, February 10, 2023–May 14, 2023; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI, June 17, 2023–September 9, 2023; Pensacola Museum of Art, University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, September 29, 2023–January 7, 2024; Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, February 19, 2024–June 2, 2024.