Dumb luck _ Paz sher

Fanflus is thrilled to present "Dumb Luck", a solo exhibition of artist Paz Sher, curated by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan. "Dumb Luck" names a kind of fortune that arrives without cause, indifferent to reason, and ungovernable. "Dumb" doubles as muteness, a failure of speech. This muteness resonates with Sher's conviction that social structures have to be first imagined in order to take place, yet the contemporary moment feels somewhat discordant. No cultural center any longer seems capable of holding such a shared order together; amid the world's ongoing instability, things are fracturing, and we seem to remain in a perpetual state of emergency and fluctuating degrees of agitation.

The exhibition takes place in the basement of 29 Henry Street, which Sher conceives (the gallery space) as an empty space interfered with a layer of gestures and objects that simultaneously invade and evade life's basic functional demands - an arrangement we're all coerced to share.

A rope is thrown over a wall, tying together a horseshoe-shaped cast bronze and a monitor playing footage of a horse that was cross-tied to be filmed. A ceiling tile is displaced to let a table fall through. A section of wall is pulled out, carving out a space for a sculpture to dwell in. 

The ear of a person who stands behind the wall listens to the room. Two isolated eyes stare at the space, a suspended gaze with no subject. (questions)

This exhibition traces and responds to this condition - at times anxious, at times melancholic, bearing an emotional weight that echoes the reality we inhabit. As Roger Caillois defined "alea," the game of pure chance, as a state in which the subject has no control over the outcome, entirely external to their will, Sher's constellation of objects is likewise governed by an equally uncontrollable, near-fated logic of chance. It is precisely through their openness to contingency that these spaces quietly constitute a form of resistance.