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 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 for the film. 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. A cast aluminum human ear stands behind the wall, listening to the room. Paried eyes stare at the space, a suspended gaze with no subject.
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.
[by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan]
Work Description
Gambler’s Run
Gambler’s Run (2025), a suspended sculpture. This is the second and last time this work is displayed. The first time, the sculpture stood upright, resembling an ordinary table one might randomly come across on a public street, inviting passive participation with the objects’ playfulness. This time, it is flipped upside down, suspended in the air, anchored to the ceiling by a chain that prevents it from crashing to the floor. Installed close to the exhibition’s entrance, the sculpture confronts viewers with the escape of its players. How does one submit, or commit, to a room whose players are gone? Sher isn’t sure if it depicts a beginning or an end; what ended for them could be a beginning for someone else.
Cross Tied (Video)
Cross Tied (Sculpture)
Cross Tied (2026), a mixed-media work with video and sculpture, the two balance each other on either side of the wall. Sher films a standing horse, its body bound by blue straps. The horse shifts gently, its hooves testing the ground - a faint, almost involuntary attempt, repeated, to step forward, to reclaim autonomy, if only for a moment. The TV monitor wrapped in straps echoes the condition of the tied horse it displays: object and image are bound by the same gesture, the container mirroring its content. Suspended on the other side of the wall is a horseshoe-shaped cast bronze, likewise bound with straps, its form inverted, like an upside-down horseshoe. Its surface carries a texture reminiscent of rotting banana peels. Is this piece a gentle jab at Cattelan’s suspended horses and his subsequent taped banana? In making, it makes, making it like.
Untitled (Corner I & II)
Untitled (Corner I & II) (2023) consists of two distinct clusters of stacked batons, their form modeled on the police baton. Corner I is cast in aluminum; its stacked forms are flattened into a near-planar mass. Corner II is made of foam, painted in varying shades of blue. Both are installed in the back corner of the exhibition. The form remains inseparable from violence, authority, and power, yet within suggested shapes, other possibilities appear to be at play. Sher exaggerates the baton's handle into a phallic form, hinting at the humoristic, almost absurd nature of masculinity. The work prompts a question: Do we still need violence within today's democracy? What violence, if any, remains necessary to sustain a society? These baton-based works are installed beside the video of the tied horse - not as a threat directed at the animal, but to hold two logics of restraint in proximity: one institutional, one intimate. The entangled compositions of the batons generate an autonomous inner logic of their own, one that isn’t necessarily violent.
Paralyzed (Left and Right)
Antihelix
In Paralyzed (Left and Right) (2023) and Antihelix (2023), a pair of eyes and an ear haunt the exhibition room. Two separate cast-aluminum eyes, poured over with silicone rubber, rest on the floor as if molten into it, staring up to the room’s void. The eyes look in no particular direction, leaving the room itself suspended in an aimless gaze. The ear is embedded in the wall, as though someone were standing outside the room, listening. The word OBEY is cut out at the helix part of the ear. Could we, as viewers, do the same - set ourselves outside the room in order to listen? Listening is always layered with subjectivity. The word “obey” invites trust in an inner voice that exceeds our understanding of what to obey, cultivating a conscious dialogue with the works in this show.
Head Birth
Head Birth (2026) is a sculpted, oversized head, split and shifted at its center. Inspired by the Greek mythology of Athena's birth from Zeus's forehead, Sher created this piece mimicking traditional statues with the concern of what would hatch, leaving open the question of what might yet emerge from it.
Tondo
Tondo (2026): On Instagram, Sher came across a photo of a horse that had escaped from a bombed stable in Israel. He expanded the image using AI and printed it on adhesive vinyl. A blue, round food cover - bought at a shop across the street - covers the photograph. Tondo, an Italian word for a round object, describes round paintings or reliefs in art. This tondo also resembles a single breast with a pierced nipple, containing the image of the horse within it.
The single exposed breast is itself a recurring motif in art history, from the one-breasted Amazons of classical sculpture to the nursing Madonnas of Christian iconography, setting the ambiguity between strength, sacrifice, and feminine nature.
[written and edited by Fanfan Yuxuan Fan, Paz Sher, special thanks to Anat Keinan]
Work List
About Artist
Paz Sher is an installation artist, sculptor, and educator who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His installations appear to be playful-mad scenarios, where individual sculptures are structured into hermetic and cryptic systems of objects within ambiguous environments. Through this practice, he crafts experimental encounters that transcend linguistic boundaries, offering glimpses into an exaggerated present to undermine today’s calamities.
Sher graduated with his Bachelor of Fine Arts cum laude (2017) from the Fine Art department at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. After graduation, he was a fellowship artist at the New Gallery Artists' Studios Teddi in Jerusalem. He also holds an ED.S. Degree (2021) from Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology, and the Arts in Tel-Aviv, Israel. In 2021, Sher moved to the United States and pursued his Master of Fine Arts (2024) in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
Sher exhibited his work in many group exhibitions in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Washington D.C, New York, and Richmond, VA. He had two solo shows at Hamidrasha Gallery in Tel Aviv (2020) and at D.D.D.D. Gallery in Manhattan. Additionally, Sher had a collaborative duo show with artist Dia Belzer at Atelier Shemi Gallery, and during his master's, he displayed his work in two extensive shows - a thesis show at the Anderson Gallery and a candidacy show at an alternative space.
About Curator
Fanfan Yuxuan Fan is a curator based in New York City. Her curatorial approach is grounded in artist–practice–driven methodology, examining the shared challenges and aspirations of her generation. She had curated exhibitions that included: He Spoke To The Birds (AAIE, Rome), To Elongate, To Entwine (Gallery 456 | China American Arts Council, New York), Soft Instructions (Art Cake, Brooklyn), Threshold in Relations (Nguyen Wahed, New York), and Subcurrents (Shanghai). Her curation has been featured in Art Spiel, Whitehot Magazine, Hot Coffee Conversations, DART Magazine, and TUSSLE Magazine.
