A conversation between Arthur Simms and Cecilia Alemani followed by a book launch and signing. Arthur Simms is an artist based in Staten Island, New York, whose human-scale assemblage sculptures radiate with poeticism and spirituality. Simms’s sculptures are sourced from found and natural materials, and are often bound with rope or wire. Likewise, his work binds together traditions and modern art historical trajectories: Surrealism’s uses of automatism and disjunction, as well as its reliance on the unconscious, are merged with the folk cultures of Jamaica, America, and Haiti, in addition to Australian Aboriginal belief systems. The resulting entanglements, constructed from materials such as bedsprings, empty bottles, bicycles, and worn-out toys, resonate with narratives of belonging, playfulness, and psychic energy. Simms’s sculpture, rather than feeling like an intervention in space, seems to appear spontaneously, as if by magic, like a creation preordained. Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York City. Since 2011, she has been the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York City. She is also the curator of the upcoming 12th SITE Santa Fe International, scheduled to open in June 2025. From 2020 to 2022, she served as artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, where she curated the acclaimed exhibition The Milk of Dreams, which was visited by over 800,000 visitors.
New York City, NY; NYC