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The Arts Intel Report

DRIFT: Fragile Futures

Sept 29 – Dec 19, 2021
545 W 30th St, New York, NY 10001, USA

After graduating from the Netherland’s Design Academy Eindhoven in 2007, Lonneke Gordjin and Ralph Nauta weren’t about to conform to gallery and museum conventions. Dissatisfied with “the confined parameters” that don’t “do justice to a body of work” they started DRIFT, a multidisciplinary Amsterdam-based artist collective that seeks to transform spaces rather than fit inside of them. Now the collective (64 artists strong) is changing the Shed’s 17,000-square-foot, four-story space with a series of connected installations. The exhibition begins with Coded Coincidence, in which lights flash on roughly 100 elm seeds blown about by wind, and moves to Ego, a woven, suspended block made of 10 miles of Japanese fluorocarbon, and Drifters, a multichannel series of films. Featuring a soundtrack made by the English visual artist, singer, and composer ANOHNI, the immersive experience encourages visitors to consider the relationship between technology and nature. —J.D.

Photo: Dario Lasagni/The Shed.