











CUT SCENE (a pseudonym for structure)
Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts, Ramapo College
CCS Bard Ramapo Prize Exhibition
November 6 - December 11, 2024
Featuring: Nairy Baghramian, Jason Hirata, Christie Neptune, Manfred Pernice
Curated by Katherine C. M. Adams
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Curatorial Text
Katherine C. M. Adams
CUT SCENE (a pseudonym for structure) questions the ways that social infrastructures give the impression of historical continuity. The exhibition features sculptural and lens-based works in which artistic production is decoupled from narratives of historical unity and forms of structural integrity. CUT SCENE’s featured works are all in some way time-based, but the times that underlie them are punctuated by loopholes and possible failures. In the domain of film, “cut scene!” verbally orders the temporary suspension of a film’s fictional world during its production, shifting the social architecture of cinema out of an imagined scenario and refocusing behind the scenes of cinematic continuity. The idea of a cut scene also evokes filmic editing at large, which often relies on combining many separate shots to create a coherent narrative and perspective. CUT SCENE is full of artistic gestures that release us from unifying fictions of this kind, revealing a false sense of coherence where we might have once perceived a smooth operation. It features works that are unconcerned with their own closure as objects or events, and that instead prioritize moments of temporal collapse and architectural complexity.
Drawings from sculptor Nairy Baghramian’s Side Leaps series (undated) represent works that have been unable to become sculpture. Intentionally undated, these Side Leaps pieces linger in a seemingly unproductive time, and display architectures that would necessarily collapse if built. The artist has compared these works to “studio tools” that support a self-reflexive and critical orientation toward other parts of her practice. Selections from Manfred Pernice’s diary, 2008, reflect the artist’s ongoing interest in ideologies of history and architecture as they impose particular frameworks of experience. Here, Pernice’s works offer an unorthodox, non-chronological portrait of history. diary uses a diaristic assembly of sculptural objects and simple structures to suggest a tableau of events that are connected through material culture and personal association, rather than by official historical timelines.
In Christie Neptune’s She Fell From Normalcy, 2017, the white cube associated with empty gallery spaces is not a neutral space but rather a site of alienation. In this video work, enclosure and claustrophobia reign, prompting us to confront the supposed “normalcy” of social spaces, and of the art world in particular. Intimate but otherworldly, Neptune choreographs an account of minoritarian subjectivity that highlights the ways it is made to stand out from the literal and figurative architectures that enforce “normal” values and rationality. Jason Hiarata’s works from the photographic series Blaise Hirata—Click and Glow, 2022, suggest a time lapse between a candle’s shadow impression and the candle itself, hovering peripherally in the frame. Hirata’s durational installation work Cigarettes and Chips in the Dark, 2021, is an intentional accumulation of items and debris that gallery staff would normally remove from the exhibition space. The work begins as the exhibition is mounted, and continues developing until closing--everything leaves a trace. Finally, Hirata’s script-based work A Storied Past, 2022, offers an ironic take on the epic significance granted to the artist CV. Hirata reimagines the lives of artists through their actual curriculum vitae, as if those memoranda were a joint biographical performance.
Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts, Ramapo College
CCS Bard Ramapo Prize Exhibition
November 6 - December 11, 2024
Featuring: Nairy Baghramian, Jason Hirata, Christie Neptune, Manfred Pernice
Curated by Katherine C. M. Adams
-
Curatorial Text
Katherine C. M. Adams
CUT SCENE (a pseudonym for structure) questions the ways that social infrastructures give the impression of historical continuity. The exhibition features sculptural and lens-based works in which artistic production is decoupled from narratives of historical unity and forms of structural integrity. CUT SCENE’s featured works are all in some way time-based, but the times that underlie them are punctuated by loopholes and possible failures. In the domain of film, “cut scene!” verbally orders the temporary suspension of a film’s fictional world during its production, shifting the social architecture of cinema out of an imagined scenario and refocusing behind the scenes of cinematic continuity. The idea of a cut scene also evokes filmic editing at large, which often relies on combining many separate shots to create a coherent narrative and perspective. CUT SCENE is full of artistic gestures that release us from unifying fictions of this kind, revealing a false sense of coherence where we might have once perceived a smooth operation. It features works that are unconcerned with their own closure as objects or events, and that instead prioritize moments of temporal collapse and architectural complexity.
Drawings from sculptor Nairy Baghramian’s Side Leaps series (undated) represent works that have been unable to become sculpture. Intentionally undated, these Side Leaps pieces linger in a seemingly unproductive time, and display architectures that would necessarily collapse if built. The artist has compared these works to “studio tools” that support a self-reflexive and critical orientation toward other parts of her practice. Selections from Manfred Pernice’s diary, 2008, reflect the artist’s ongoing interest in ideologies of history and architecture as they impose particular frameworks of experience. Here, Pernice’s works offer an unorthodox, non-chronological portrait of history. diary uses a diaristic assembly of sculptural objects and simple structures to suggest a tableau of events that are connected through material culture and personal association, rather than by official historical timelines.
In Christie Neptune’s She Fell From Normalcy, 2017, the white cube associated with empty gallery spaces is not a neutral space but rather a site of alienation. In this video work, enclosure and claustrophobia reign, prompting us to confront the supposed “normalcy” of social spaces, and of the art world in particular. Intimate but otherworldly, Neptune choreographs an account of minoritarian subjectivity that highlights the ways it is made to stand out from the literal and figurative architectures that enforce “normal” values and rationality. Jason Hiarata’s works from the photographic series Blaise Hirata—Click and Glow, 2022, suggest a time lapse between a candle’s shadow impression and the candle itself, hovering peripherally in the frame. Hirata’s durational installation work Cigarettes and Chips in the Dark, 2021, is an intentional accumulation of items and debris that gallery staff would normally remove from the exhibition space. The work begins as the exhibition is mounted, and continues developing until closing--everything leaves a trace. Finally, Hirata’s script-based work A Storied Past, 2022, offers an ironic take on the epic significance granted to the artist CV. Hirata reimagines the lives of artists through their actual curriculum vitae, as if those memoranda were a joint biographical performance.

Exhibition Checklist
Jason Hirata
Cigarettes and Chips in the Dark, 2021
Agreement to postpone cleaning.
Execution period: Friday, November 1st - Friday, December 7th
Courtesy of the Artist
Jason Hirata
Blaise Hirata
Glow, 2022
Digital C-Print
17.5 x 14.25 inches
Ed. of 5 + 2 AP
Courtesy of the Artist and Ulrik Gallery, New York
Jason Hirata
Blaise Hirata
Click, 2022
Digital C-Print
17.5 x 14.25 inches
Ed. of 5 + 2 AP
Courtesy of the Artist and Ulrik Gallery, New York
Jason Hirata
A Storied Past, 2022 (exhibition copy, produced 2023)
Screenplay
8.5 x 11 inches
Courtesy of the Artist and Fanta-MLN
Nairy Baghramian
Side Leaps, open date
Marker on paper
Paper: 10.5 x 14 inches
Frame: 19.75 x 23.75 x 1.25 inches
Courtesy of the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Nairy Baghramian
Side Leaps, open date
Wax pencil and pencil on paper, zinc coated metal, wood, magnets, Plexiglas
Paper: 11.6 x 11.25
Frame: 19.75 x 23.75 x 11.25
Courtesy of the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Manfred Pernice
diary – 03.11.07, 2008
Particleboard, Formica, oil-based enamel paint, and vinyl numbers
Variable dimensions
Courtesy of the Artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York
Manfred Pernice
diary – 20.02.01, 2008
Particleboard, Formica, vinyl numbers, and oil-based enamel
Variable dimensions
Courtesy of the Artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York
Christie Neptune
She Fell from Normalcy, 2017
One-channel video
Variable dimensions, 7:45 min
Courtesy of the Artist