A Conversation with Dave McKenzie and Elijah Burgher: Open Sessions Event

Join us for a conversation with Dave McKenzie and Elijah Burgher, moderated by Wes Miller of Art21 at The Drawing Center, on Friday, March 7 at 7pm. Co- hosted with Skowhegan, the conversation will coincide withAction + Object + Exchange the first Open Sessions exhibition, with artists Eleanor Aldrich, Derek Dunlop, Heather Hart, Yara Pina, Andrew Ross, Lauren Seiden, and Barbara Weissberger. Open Sessions is a two-year platform for artists to find new approaches for contextualizing and exhibiting their work, through conversation, public programs, and collaborative gallery installations. Each artist inAction + Object + Exchange reveals a transformative process through the work’s end result: images become objects, drawings become sculptural, symbols become concrete.

McKenzie and Burgher are invited to contextualize the first Open Sessions exhibition as artists who utilize their own likenesses and bodies to speak to the interior/exterior creation of identity and agency: art is a mouth-process that speaks a language-material. Through sculpture and performance, McKenzie asks us to examine the relationship of the private and public persona to contemporary culture and our sense of self. Burgher binds the act and performance of drawing to the embodiment of desire and the powerful potential of interpersonal connection. McKenzie and Burgher met at Skowhegan in 2011, and will reunite in this year's Whitney Biennial.