Carly Mandel: Premium
September 7th – January 7th, 2022Exhibitions
Opening reception Tuesday, September 7th from 6-8 PM.
Attend virtual programming for this exhibition on October 26th from 6-7 PM! Click HERE to register for the event In Conversation: Carly Mandel and Kerry Doran.
Curated by Kerry Doran.
For her solo exhibition at UrbanGlass, Carly Mandel presents new glass, ceramic, and metal sculptures that highlight the consumerist foundation of the healthcare industry in the United States. Through the staging of the installation, Mandel draws parallels between the interiors of medical facilities and retail spaces, especially those selling “wellness” products. The show’s title, Premium, speaks to the total retailization of medicalized life, in which survival literally comes at a premium. By carefully hand making otherwise mass-produced products, Mandel instills her personal narratives of physical therapy and disability into some of the objects that have shaped her life — all at a cost — such as massage devices, jump ropes, medical ID bracelets, and cough drops. Thus, Premium also reclaims disability as much as the trauma it can inflict when living in a fundamentally ableist society, one in which capital accumulation simultaneously produces and extracts from “sick” and “disabled” peoples.
About the artist:
Carly Mandel (b. St. Louis, MO) is an artist working in Brooklyn, NY. In 2015, she received her BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR. Her sculptures and videos have been shown nationally and internationally, current exhibitions include a solo show with Agnes Varis Gallery in Brooklyn, NY and a group exhibition with the Krannert Art Museum in Urbana, Champaign IL. Mandel was a 2017 recipient of the Emerging Artist Grant from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a 2019 recipient of a Visiting Artist Fellowship from UrbanGlass. She is a 2021 artist in residence with Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. An interview between Mandel and Kerry Doran was published in BOMB in 2018; a profile by Emily Watlington is featured in the September/October 2021 issue of Art in America.
About the curator:
Kerry Doran (b. Brockton, MA) is a writer and curator based in New York. They are a PhD Student and Graduate Fellow in the Art History Department at the CUNY Graduate Center; a Curatorial Advisor for Digital Projects at M+ Museum of Visual Culture in Hong Kong; and teach global art history and its methods at Brooklyn College. Doran’s research focuses on Latin America and is engaged with networked communities, political organizing, mass media and pop culture, identity and (self)-representation, and performance.
Doran holds an MA with distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she was an Associate Scholar at the Research Forum. She was previously the director of bitforms and Postmasters, respectively, and was one of the founding members at New Inc, the New Museum’s incubator for art, technology, and design. Publications include Affidavit, Artforum, Art in America, ARTNews, Bomb, Flash Art, Real Life, Terremoto, The Art Newspaper, as well as books and exhibition catalogue contributions. Lectures include Goldsmiths, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Houston, and Virginia Tech, among others.
Exhibition photography by Daniel Terna.
