Raúl De Nieves closes his 2014 ISSUE Project Room Residency with Heel Yourself, an immersive 20-channel audio installation built from the sounds of ABBA's 1979 classic Voulez Vous, mixed live from vinyl simultaneously by 20 turntables along side Erik Z.
The night includes a live gestural performance by multidisciplinary performance artist and musician Sadaf H. Nava, and by sculptor and performance artist Whitney Vangrin who, for the duration of Heel Yourself, engages in rigorous movement atop sheet foam and salt.
This performance coincides with De Nieves' DE FEET N JOY, a pop-up “shoe store” and sculptural installation on view in ISSUE's lobby through December 19th.
Raúl De Nieves is an artist, designer, and musician based in New York. His work frequently explores boundaries and taboos, spanning large scale installation and sculpture, narrative painting and multimedia. De Nieves has performed at The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, MoMA San Francisco, MAD Museum, Performa and appears in Ryan Trecartin’s films. He performs regularly as part of HARIBO, an experimental music outfit also featuring artists Jessie Stead and Nathan Whipple. De Nieves’ sculptural shoe designs have been exhibited by the Loyal Gallery, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld and Mario Sorrenti, and worn by Lady Gaga.
Whitney Vangrin is a sculptor and performance artist. Equal parts physical and psychological, both performance and sculpture highlight materiality, while making allusions to film, dance, and disease.
Sadaf H. Nava is a multidisciplinary performance artist and musician. Her focus is the body, its extensions, resistance and confinement, vocal improvisation and the construction and deconstruction of femininity. Sadaf's practice incorporates a variety of mediums, often using formal explorations of movement and materiality. For the duration of Heel Yourself, through a dual urge for confrontational experimentation and narrative cohesion, Sadaf will experiment with plasticity and parasitical metamorphosis through an engagement with bound movement and transformative forms."
