The Potential in Waves Colliding, 2016, string and thread. Courtesy the artist.
Jonah Groeneboer’s The Potential in Waves Colliding is a string and thread installation created for Queens International 2016. Suspended from the ceiling just inside the Museum’s eastern entryway, the delicate curve of its grid echoes the structural pattern of the iconic Unisphere that lies steps away in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. As light passes over the nearly transparent weaving, pale blue and white colored threads come in and out of focus. The viewer is prompted to take time and care with the piece in order to locate all of the subtle contours. The impossibility of seeing the entirety of The Potential in Waves Colliding from a single vantage point is characteristic of much of Groeneboer’s work. The artist examines the relationship between seeing and knowing, and the negotiation of assumptions through a process of perception. A personal politics of transgender and queer experience inform the work, as Groeneboer’s use of abstraction and duration stand in for a resistance to society’s often swift assumptions about gender.
Jonah Groeneboer studied at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, received an MFA in Studio Art at New York University (2007) and a BFA in Intermedia at Pacific Northwest College of Art (2005). Current and forthcoming shows include the Objects are Slow Events at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art and Shifters at Art in General, both New York. His work has been exhibited at MoMA/PS1 (2015), Contemporary Art Museum Houston, TX (2015), Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Canada (2013), Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York (2013), Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2010), and Exile, Berlin, Germany (2010). His work has been written about in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art 21, and Art Journal. He has been artist in residence at Ox-Bow School of Art, the Fire Island Artist Residency, and Recess’ Session Program in New York City.