Embrace the World from Within at Faurschou New York

FAURSCHOU NEW YORK IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE OPENING OF EMBRACE THE WORLD FROM WITHIN, A GROUP SHOW FEATURING WORKS BY LOUISE BOURGEOIS, YOKO ONO, AND MILES GREENBERG. THE EXHIBITION WILL BE ON VIEW APRIL 1, 2023 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 17, 2023. Embrace the World from Within revolves around physical and metaphorical aspects of the embrace: from the merging together of bodies, becoming something more and new, to the act of acceptance and cover or by contrast as claustrophobic smothering. Through performance, installation, and sculpture, myriad facets are unfolded in three galleries, one dedicated to each artist. Highlights include tangible sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, contrasting installations by Yoko Ono, and a performance piece by Miles Greenberg. LOUISE BOURGEOIS Louise Bourgeois grasps inner conflict by expressing herself through tactile sculpture. In her pursuit, introverted references nevertheless become universal subjects, recognizable to most. To Louise Bourgeois, the embrace is of a shielding character, but as well-intentioned as this act of protection might be, just as insulating or even suffocating it can feel.

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010) was a French- American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.

YOKO ONO Yoko Ono is known for her ability to take on the complexities of the world through her art, turning challenges into hope. In this exhibition, two of the artist’s installation works We’re All Water and Ex It are juxtaposed. The first work is made up of a row of identical glass bottles of water, each labeled with the name of a famous or infamous person, from artists and musicians to dictators, freedom fighters, and comedians, among others. The work is a reminder of what fundamentally unifies us regardless of status, impact, and name. In Ex It the viewer is met by bird song and rows and rows of rudimental wooden crates with green trees growing out of them. Looking closer, the crates are disaster relief caskets, and the trees grow out where the faces of the dead would be. Yoko Ono shows us how the elemental forces of life and death are eternally present, interdependent and intertwined.

Yoko Ono (b. 18 February 1933 in Tokyo, Japan) is an artist working with a variety of genres. Her thought-provoking work challenges people’s understanding of art and the world around them. She was one the originators of Concept Art, whose work has encompassed performance, instructions, film, music, and writing. She moved to New York in 1952, following her studies in philosophy in Japan and by the late 1950s, she became part of New York City's vibrant avant-garde activities. In 1960, she opened her Chambers Street loft, where she and La Monte Young presented a series of radical performances, and she exhibited realizations of some of her early conceptual works. She returned to Tokyo in 1962, where she performed her world-famous Cut Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo in 1964, and published Grapefruit, a book of her collected conceptual instruction pieces. In September of that same year, she returned to New York, and in 1965, she performed Cut Piece during her concert at Carnegie Recital Hall. For years, Yoko Ono continued to perform, experiment and extend the boundaries of art with her work. Some of the significant works were made together with John Lennon in 1969, when they realized Bed-In, and the worldwide War Is Over ! (If You Want It) campaign for peace. Yoko Ono created IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in 2007 as a permanent installation on Vi.ey Island, Iceland, dedicated to the memory of her late husband John Lennon. She continues to work tirelessly for peace with her IMAGINE PEACE campaign.

Today, Ono is widely recognized for her groundbreaking films and her radical music, recordings, concerts, as well as her performance art. Her films, Fly, “Rape”, Film No. 4, to name a few, are considered classics of 20th century film, and her music has been acknowledged as the genesis of much of the new wave of musical forms that have circled the world.

MILES GREENBERG In Miles Greenberg’s performance The Embrace, two blinded performers sit atop a large rock, isolated in a glass cube. Meeting for the very first time, the two remain locked in a perpetual intimate embrace, gradually coalescing into one sculptural form. The amalgamate of the two figures is reflected from below by a pool of saltwater. Overhead, a steady drip of fresh water quietly feeds into the reservoir below, disrupting the reflective surface. The two waters fuse invisibly, like an estuary enclosing the couple’s feet.