This pairing of works by William Anastasi and Dove Bradshaw marked the first time that the Fifth Floor Foundation dedicated its exhibition space to concurrent but interrelated solo exhibitions. Anastasi presented recent “unsighted drawings,” made either with eyes closed (often while riding the subway), or in a space without light. By enacting such situations, as Anastasi has explained, he “forgets drawing, forgets art history, forgets art.” All this forgetting frees him to transcribe his interface with the immediate environment, creating tangible records of lived experience.
Similarly committed to avoiding fixed outcomes, Bradshaw makes works that are inseparable from natural processes and the passage of time. The title of the series she presented in this exhibition—“Indeterminacy”—is indicative of the degree to which her practice remains open-ended, either capturing the effects of a singular event, or utilizing materials that transform over time. A concurrent exhibition of works by Anastasi and Bradshaw took place at the Sandra Gering Gallery.