Open Sessions 7: Hibernating Plan is a group exhibition that considers drawing in relationship to the sense of suspended time inherent in planning. Featuring artists Sheree Hovsepian, Rafael Kelman, Arnold Kemp, Thessia Machado, Sun Moqing, Sara Chang Yan, and Tuguldur Yondonjamts, the exhibition explores the notion of the “sketch” in relation to the instinct to hibernate, intuit, and mull over. Including works that feature light, sound, drawing, sculpture, and moving image, Hibernating Plan suggests that drawing exists alongside other forms of knowledge that cannot be exclusively acquired by observation, reason, or experience.

Sheree Hovsepian (b. 1974, Iran) lives and works in New York City. Her work develops from a photographic impulse in which a philosophy is explored and expanded in ways entering formal, sculptural, and material relevance while maintaining a physicality that relates naturally to the artist’s hand.

Rafael Kelman (b. 1986, Vermont) is a New York based artist working across sculpture, drawing, video, and performance. His recent practice has largely revolved around an ongoing project titled Gigantomachy, which explores the collapse, inversion, and manipulation of disparate heroic and utopian fantasies, including those of the lone wolf terrorist, the geodesic dome enthusiast, and the radical mime.

Arnold Joseph Kemp (b. 1968, Boston) is an artist, writer, and educator. His drawings, prints, sculptures, and performances take advantage of an impure aesthetic, incorporating high and low culture, while highlighting practices that probe collective fictions of person and personality.

Thessia Machado (b. 1967, Brazil) lives and works in New York. Her work investigates the physicality of sound and its effect on our perception of space. Through installation, drawing, or sculpture, her pieces revel in the mechanical relationships among things: how they work and are affected by the actions and characteristics of other things.

SUN Moqing (b. 1990, Beijing) lives and works in Beijing and Hamburg. In his work, drawing is not only a still, but also a time-based media. His drawings, photographs, collages, and site-specific works attempt to redistribute space, reflect emptiness, and tell stories about time.

Sara Chang Yan (b. 1982, Lisbon) lives and works in Lisbon. Her practice is focused on drawing and proposes paper as active field, a potential energy that registers on every surface of the work. A multitude of gestures are in relation, alive: as the viewer or the light moves, the work changes. Her drawings also use silence and sound to create a sequence of moments of differing duration.

Tuguldur Yondonjamts (b. 1977, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) lives and works in New York. His projects are focused on visual research of the space between tamed and untamed worlds, through drawing, sculpture, video, printmaking, and sound experiments.

Curated by Lisa Sigal and Nova Benway

Sun Moqing, Neighbor No. 1, 2016. Ink on object, 4 x 2 ¾ inches. Courtesy of the artist.