The Brooklyn Rail

Kianja Strobert has fashioned eleven benches as the core of her current show, Pennies from Heaven, in acknowledgement of the fact that in New York, as in so many urban centers, the park bench acts as a pedestal on which the absurd theater of city life transpires. A variety of people and animals and objects come to rest on these ubiquitous public seats, and whether or not they are out-of-the-ordinary, they are on view and available for critique. Strobert, however, readjusts our focus from the everyday passage of life to the bench as a site in itself, abstract assemblages of objects, and questions of class and sexuality. Nestled against the wall right as one walks in the gallery is Untitled #3 (2025), a bench whose right side is occupied by what appears to be a neatly folded coat of grandmotherly brown and white paisley fabric, a pale yellow devotional candle, a marigold-colored flower, and a silver scarf. Casually placed on the left is a similarly geriatric Bloomingdale’s “Medium Brown Bag”—a very specific symbol (in this New Yorker’s mind) of a certain age and class of lady aspiring to be seen as upper class. Except for the Medium Brown Bag, which plays itself in this pantomime, everything else in Untitled #3 is made of plaster or papier-mâché and metal lathe, existing as a kind of full-scale simulacra of itself that recalls Coosje van Bruggen or Claes Oldenburg. On the one hand, it’s a comment on sculpture; the simple transformation of material completely derails the meaning, and an empty park bench becomes a memorial. But in this sculpture and most of the others on view here, Strobert includes a detail, in this case the candle, which gently seals the meaning.

In Untitled #6 (2025), a dumbbell and a calendar decorated with the photograph of a red rose rest on the bench. In Untitled #4 (2025) we find, among other objects, a ladle with an oversize pearl and a full-color glossy page with a photograph of a retro bedroom inscribed with the text of the poem “Ozymandias.” The viewer grapples with the amusing implications of the symbolism: a weight trainer with a sensitive side for the former and an intellectual love affair involving luxurious interiors and deep discussions of Shelley for the latter? I’m being excessively literal, but Strobert clearly enjoys playing with the rather tight selection of objects we encounter. She lets in color in an effort to imply an alternative to the enforced sameness of her benches’ dull metallic finish. Still, it is clear that reducing the scope of materiality forces the viewer to engage with her Duchampian game of transformation, recognizable objects made over into abstractions in a kind of bait-and-switch mise-en-abîme. The abstract intent is strengthened by the inclusion of hybrid forms also made from the lathe, wood, papier-mâché, or plaster, but which are purely fanciful objects. Noise/Disaster #1–4 (all 2025) and Bunting (2025), for example, are placed on and around the benches, and within the context of the (NYC) park bench framework, none of these objects seem particularly out of place, heightening the ubiquity of abstraction and symbolism in the artist’s mind.

The visual pun of the lathe and plaster and the papier-mâché cloth is something that Strobert can’t get enough of. The idea of a flexible fabric form rendered solid evokes the momentary and references a canon of “frozen” sculptures created by the likes of Lynda Benglis and George Segal. Not only does every bench come with a folded garment, in the back room of the gallery is an installation of Strobert’s “24 Folded Forms” (all 2025). A bolt of fabric hung over something—a hangar, a chair, a bar—there is a formal thread linking the works. All are painted, some metallic while others approximate a more realistic appearance. The honeycomb texture of the lathe in this case mimics a coarse textile weave. Much Like Lynda Benglis’s “Bows,” these folded forms seem to embody a simple gesture of feminine presence. This is only amplified by the placement of the forms at differing heights along the wall, seemingly indicating that each partakes of a kind of autonomy or individuality. Their neat and simple conceit, a single fold, makes their presence seem temporary, not an abandonment but as if the owner, each of the different owners, will be back shortly. Unlike the benches, with these works we don’t feel buffeted by a wave of loss. After the not-so-strange sensation of wandering through a small park of ghosts, of which there are many in New York, happening upon Strobert’s witty but affecting installation in the gallery’s back room offers a gentle respite from the sensation of another gutting but illuminating day in the city.