Blesofsky’s artistic practice is truly specific to site. The making of her work only comes after intense research and on-site investigation into the exhibition space as well and the surrounding locale. After combing through historic archives at the library, online probing, and physical inspection of the Lower East Side on and around Suffolk Street, she found that the gallery was formerly an open lot to a headstone business called Forsyth Monument Works. The title of the exhibition “sneaking into the monuments lot from the building on the right” is a narrative quote from the 1948 film, Naked City, in which our space is featured as the then monuments business.

In reference to the objects that were once stored in the space, Blesofsky erects monuments of her own. The outdoor sculpture, Monuments (Tripartite), alludes to the standard arched tombstone shape as well as the tripartite windows that make up the upper floors of the nearby Rivington House --a building embroiled in development-related scandal. Like many features in New York City, the illusion of permanence is undone by closer inspection -the back being held up by loose scaffolding.

In Fenestration 1, Blesofsky excavates the windows that once lined the adjacent store. The outlines of these windows are still visible on our backyard wall, clearly sealed with cinder blocks on a brick wall. This patchwork architecture, as Blesofsky finds, is evident throughout the city and most notable on the lower east side due to the variety of unique moldings. Lining the opposite wall are arches from Fenestration 2, examples of an extinct method of in-situ mold making. The arches float high on the wall framing a long gone phantom doodad. Blesofsky’s process itself - inquiry, reduction, and addition - mimics those methods that make the city’s physical history.

Blesofsky received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and BA from UC Santa Cruz. She has received numerous residencies and fellowships, including Urban Glass, the Lower East Side Printshop, Museum of Arts and Design, CUE Art Foundation, Smack Mellon, Dieu Donne, and MacDowell Colony. Blesofsky’s work has been shown at galleries in Miami, San Francisco, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Washington DC. Blesofsky’s work has been written about in The Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, NYFA Current, Art Fag City, Hand Papermaking Magazine and The Brooklyn Rail. Blesofsky will be a Iaspis Grantholder at the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s residency in Stockholm, in 2019. Born in Boston and raised in California, she currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.