Jealous/Sway | Rochester Art Center

Across bodies and masses and disciplines there could be conversation and translation. How do things share a space? What is it to be responsive vs. competitive vs. appropriative? How is dance sculpture?  What is real? What is plastic? What is mediated? What will last forever? 

Jealousy|Sway is a collision of artistic impulses between two visual artists (Ryan Fontaine and Rachel Youn) and two choreographers (the choreographic collaboration or Kristin Van Loon & Arwen Wilder known as HIJACK).

Jealousy (2019, Fontaine, Van Loon, Wilder) was first a dance performance in a multi-room installation with the dancers barely visible, penned into a room within a room. The audience was given the choice to squint through tiny holes in the walls or to meander into other rooms to spy via security camera footage nestled in rich, verdant art objects: kinetic sculptures, pink donuts and twining pathos vines.

Sway started with the celebrated 2020 installation of dancing fake flowers affixed to decommissioned massage machines by Rachel Youn called “Gather”. Later Youn’s 25 kinetic sculptures moved to the Minneapolis basement gallery at HAIR+NAILS and became a pandemic-era proxy gay disco called “Underparty”. In 2022, HIJACK plugged in the dancing sculptures on a big theater stage, danced among them and called it Sway.

At Rochester Art Center, Jealousy and Sway are warped, squished, and extended into galleries and a long crossfading corridor. These installations are always moving, dancing, and, three times during the exhibition they hold HIJACK dance performances. The installations and performances are enhanced with contributions by dancer Jules Bither and artists Emma Beatrez, Rachel Collier, and Julia Garcia.