NYAB Event - Arielle Falk “RESURWRECKTION”

Arielle Falk “RESURWRECKTION”

Pablo's Birthday

This event has ended.

“… I check the weather forecasts hourly… I am exhausted from the constant wind, the heat, the glare, the threat of rain. After midnight, alone in the cabana is when I find the most peace. It’s then I can imagine I’m far away…”

In her exhibition at Pablo’s Birthday, the artist presents a series of works inspired by her conflicted relationship to fantasy. Part performance, part self-reflective journey, Falk lived in a rooftop cabana in industrial Bushwick for 60 days. The cabana itself is the experiential art from which these works are artifacts.

Unremittingly exposed to the elements, isolated, rarely leaving the roof except to buy food and supplies, Falk adopted the role of “castaway,” shipwrecked on her very own “roof island.” The setting, when viewed through the lens of fantasy, suggested to Falk a tropical getaway. In reality, her “island” was located in a barren, nature-deprived section of Brooklyn, one story above several working factories. This became the perfect vantage point for her to examine the dichotomy between fantasy and reality.

In her installation, which consists of a series of what she describes as “tattered flags” or the “remnants of sails from a shipwreck,” the artist channels the privations she experienced on the rooftop. Using generic stock images of paradise - wall murals intended for use by the manufacturer as inspirational scenic backdrops for offices - Falk manipulates the material with a hot air gun to recreate her constant exposure to the extreme heat, light, darkness and the movement of the wind. In the resulting lace-like pieces, Falk carefully destroys the idyllic imagery, literally creating holes in a physical representation of fantasy, mirroring the disintegration of the artist’s own whimsical
second-life as “castaway.”