A Conversation:
Robert Grosvenor
Wednesday, January 24, 6–7 pm

Karma presents a conversation between writer Randy Kennedy and artist Mark Handforth moderated by writer and curator Bob Nickas, on the occasion of Robert Grosvenor’s exhibition at 22 East 2nd Street, New York, on view from January 6–March 2, 2024.

Mark Handforth’s works are interventions in space: they offer novel engagements within existing environments and assert new perspectives on familiar fixtures. His sculptures displace quotidian objects and recontextualize their forms in unexpected articulations. In some of his iconic works, the bodies of streetlamps, traffic signs, and telephones whimsically buckle, twist, and droop. The seemingly defunct and defeated contortions of Handforth’s forms is countered by a gracefulness imparted by his meticulous craftsmanship; this incongruity imbues the works with a wry humor and an endearing pathos. Incorporating materials such as spray-painted metals, burning candles, and neon lights, Handforth’s works reference urban streetscapes in their post-punk aesthetic and utilitarian minimalism, while the capricious scale and juxtapositions draw on the legacies of Surrealism and Dadaist absurdism.

Randy Kennedy is a writer, editor and curator. He worked for 25 years for The New York Times, much of that time writing about the art world, and he has also written for Aperture, The Paris Review, The Art Newspaper and numerous other publications. His first novel, Presidio, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018. He is currently the editor of Ursula magazine, published by Hauser & Wirth.

Bob Nickas is a writer and curator based in New York, is the author of numerous books and catalogs, including two on the work of Robert Grosvenor. His most recent collection of essays and interviews, Corrected Proofs: Previously Unpublished, Uncollected, Unwanted, was published by At Last in September 2023.

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