BRENDAN FERNANDES
In Two, 2024
Screenprint on cotton muslin
(4) 165 x 44 in. panels
Copyright The Artist
Commissioned by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, dance composer and visual artist Brendan Fernandes worked in collaboration with FWM’s Studio team to create an installation of curtains and soft sculptures to...
Commissioned by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, dance composer and visual artist Brendan Fernandes worked in collaboration with FWM’s Studio team to create an installation of curtains and soft sculptures to accompany an exhibition of the artist Scott Burton’s (1939–1989) work. In a new series of duets titled In Two, Fernandes has written dance scores that take Burton’s furniture sculptures as a point of departure to explore the duality of display and concealment in gay cruising culture—ideas that Burton had pursued throughout his career. Fernandes integrates specific gestures—“flip the wrist,”“clasp arm to the breast”—directly from Burton’s choreographic notes. Taking inspiration from Window Curtains, a work in FWM’s collection that Burton created during his own FWM residency in 1978, Fernandes worked with the FWM Studio to create a new set of curtains that would be activated by his choreographed performances. Screen printed on cotton muslin, the curtains feature flesh, steel gray, and blush-colored fingerprints left on a phone screen. For the artist, these smudges are suggestive of texting or swiping left or right in dating apps—a digital form of cruising.