Queer Thoughts is honored to present the first New York solo exhibition by Mindy Rose Schwartz.

For this show the artist will present a selection of new works that continue her sculptural exploration of the objects and techniques of vernacular American decor, excavating the coded sentiments and emotional uses embedded in their design. Often employing the set of skills the artist was taught as a child and adolescent, Schwartz’s sculptural repertoire re-contextualizes and repurposes these incidental craft methods that, although not lacking charm, are commonly dismissed as trivial or irrelevant. Schwartz’s focus repeatedly turns to the knickknack and the collectible, on whose shining surfaces the mechanism of self-identification is written large. To behold these figurines is an inculcation to learned modes of behavior and desire–to be as graceful and poised as porcelain dancers, to wonder how you measure up.

Choices of decor are always a matter of taste, and taste implies an underlying system of social difference (an overt synonym of taste is classy). Schwartz’s re-appropriation of the processes and materials assigned to her poses an epistemological inquiry regarding access, distribution and performance: who learns what? and why?