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    In Practice: Devin T. Mays

    In Practice: Devin T. Mays

    Sep 23-Dec 11, 2023

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    Devin T. Mays makes work through ongoing encounters with objects and material fragments. Mays’ practice—a particularly apt term for his methods of artmaking—sends him circling the blocks around an exhibition space, coming across naturally-occurring sculptural “moments” in the built environment, and returning to work and rework the materials and conditions at hand. At SculptureCenter, Mays tends to the courtyard and its gravel floor. He rakes stone, engineers piles, notices anomalies (holes, topography, old pipes), and redistributes volumes of stone to uncover them. Gather, Weight posits Mays as a patient agitator, a subtle intervener, a caretaker, and an attentive facilitator of art as something that comes in and out of focus at different times. In this way, Mays’ sculpture engages found object traditions with a subtly revelatory tone, drawing out a balance between artistic intervention and raw material. His work and the traces of his semi-performative process serve the idea that art is a way of being attuned to the world, a sensitivity to the unspectacular and idiosyncratic ways that viewers encounter and create relationships and meaning with dormant, commingling stuff. Gather, Weight reflects a process of reading or sensing the built environment as a potential manifestation of art in its own right, evoking a sense of finding sculpture without looking for it.

    Sponsors

    In Practice 2023 is made possible by the generosity of the Elaine Graham Weitzen Foundation for Fine Arts. The Foundation’s support for SculptureCenter’s annual open call exhibition reflects Elaine Graham Weitzen’s (1920-2017) lifelong commitment to emerging artists and her exuberant support of new ideas in art. Weitzen served as a devoted Trustee of SculptureCenter from 1987 to 2017.

    Major support for the In Practice program is provided by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. The In Practice program is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

    Leadership support for SculptureCenter’s exhibitions and programs is provided by Carol Bove, Barbara and Andrew Gundlach, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Jill and Peter Kraus, and Teiger Foundation. Major support is provided by the Marguerite Steed Hoffman Donor Advised Fund at The Dallas Foundation, Karyn Kohl, Miyoung Lee and Neil Simpkins, Eleanor Heyman Propp, and Jacques Louis Vidal. Support is also generously provided by the May and Samuel Rudin Foundation, Inc., with additional funding from Candy and Michael Barasch, Sanford Biggers, Libby and Adrian Ellis, Jane Hait and Justin Beal, and Amy and Sean Lyons.