PULLEY

PULLEY: a collaborative exhibition presents a radical experiment and mutual exchange between ten NIAD artists and Christopher Robin Duncan. The show’s punchy title refers both to the physical mechanism that allowed for these works to be created and to the greater concept of a pulley system: a collection of wheels and ropes that operate in concert to lift an object.

The artists in PULLEY upend the convention of the traditional group show as a collection of individual artists presenting individual works, instead prioritizing the magic alchemy of working in tandem with one another, with light, with space. The exhibition features fabric canvases, wearable fabrics, and ceramic sculpture.

Guided in a workshop facilitated by multidisciplinary artist Christopher Robin Duncan, the NIAD artists prepared fabrics to go up via pulley to the building’s roof to be exposed for three to six months before being “harvested.” A signature of Duncan’s practice, these sun-bleached fabric canvases are site-specific and durational documentation of the adaptive, responsive, and warmly generous relationships between artists working across the disability spectrum.

RELATED PROGRAMS:

• Opening Reception: Saturday, September 20, 2025, 3 - 5 pm.
• Artist Conversation & Potluck in the park: Saturday, October 18, 2025, 1 - 4 pm
• Book Launch & Closing Reception: Saturday, November 15, 2025, 3 - 5 pm

Arstanda Billy White

Deatra Colbert

Felicia Griffin

Karen May

Mat Van Dongen

Mireya Betances

Peter Harris

Richard Naranjo

Shantae Robinson

Shawn Sanders

Sylvia Fragoso

Christopher Robin Duncan

Christopher Robin Duncan (b. 1974, Perth Amboy, New Jersey) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. Duncan utilizes the sun and the moon as well as time and the tides as conceptual and compositional prompts for both sonic and visual work. In his long term sun exposure works, sunlight and the passing of time are harnessed to create images which exist in a liminal space between painting and photography. Each work on fabric is meant to honor time and capture the energy of the locales in which the exposures occur.

Duncan's sonic work consists of lush, tonal, open compositions created with harmonica, tuning forks, percussion, electronics, and field recordings of the ocean. Part ritual, part ceremony, Duncan's live performances often employ candle light, circumambulation, and evoke time passing in the form of setting suns and full moons. In recent years, Duncan has begun frequently experimenting with clay. With a similarly intuitive and sensitive approach, he produces ceramic instruments, vessels to hold the ocean, and functional ceramics such as cups and bowls.

Outside of his studio practice, he runs LAND AND SEA, which publishes books and records, with his partner Maria Otero. Duncan received his BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts and his MFA from Stanford University. He is represented by Rebecca Camacho Presents and Halsey McKay Gallery.