Chaperone with Sara Greenberger Rafferty

Wednesday, June 10, 7pm

Lucas

(1986, David Seltzer)

EFA Project Space presents Chaperone, an eight-week summer event. This weekly series consists of films handpicked by a group of artists, all whose work provocatively explores disparate aspects of our culture’s love affair with mediated reality.

EFA Project Space welcomes the artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty as our guest for the first screening of the series. She has selected, Lucas (1986), as the film to share with the audience.

"I have chosen the film Lucas as a chaperone to my autobiography as much as to my actual work.  I first saw Lucas on a quasi-bootleg VHS, courtesy of my grandparent’s Nebraskan cable provider taped directly off of HBO - an amenity not yet offered in my own Chicago suburb.  I recall that Lucas was on the same tape (recorded for maximum capacity but minimum quality in EP mode) as The Gods Must Be Crazy, which I never watched in its entirety (its conceit was completely impenetrable to a nine year old). Like so many films of my youth, Lucas is the story of an underdog: a slight, wise-and-voice-cracking dork. I suppose I identified with Lucas — brainy, funny, strange, tiny (full disclosure: I was a tomboy and was often referred to as “shrimp” or “greenbooger”) — even as I was truly in love with Cappy, the archetypical hot wide-receiver, played with a dreamy vacancy by Charlie Sheen. I’m not sure if this movie holds up after 20 years, but I do know that it has certain crucial ingredients which continue to inform my life — both as an artist and beyond — namely: football, humiliation, and testicles. ”

Image Courtesy Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York

Born in Chicago, Sara Greenberger Rafferty currently lives and works in Brooklyn. In recent years, and through a wide range of mediums, including re-photography, video, and drawing Rafferty’s work has embraced and explored the role of the performer, escape artist, comedian, and mental patient. Self-described as an “underwhelming object maker,” her sculptural work quite deftly employs the familiar and incidental matte-black infrastructures of AV equipment yielding stark minimal pieces brimming with pathos.

In early 2009, Rafferty had a solo exhibition at The Kitchen, New York. Another solo exhibition at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York is forthcoming this fall. In 2006, she had solo projects at Sandroni Rey Gallery, Los Angeles and P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York. Her Public Art Fund-commissioned sculpture, After Harry, will be on view at MetroTech Center through September. Rafferty’s work has been included in recent group exhibitions including at Museum 52, Guild & Greyshkul, Susan Inglett, Artist Space, Gagosian Gallery, and Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, all New York; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; and ARTSPACE, Auckland, New Zealand.
Beverages provided by Magic Hat Brewery.

EFA Project Space is located at 323 West 39 Street, 2nd Floor.

For more information on the event, contact projectspace@efanyc.org, or 212-563-5855 x 151