Gil Yefman: It Ain’t Necessarily Soft

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to announce It Ain’t Necessarily Soft, Gil Yefman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. It Ain’t Necessarily Soft will be on view from August 5 through September 15, 2023. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of performances and walkthroughs, including a conversation between Gil Yefman and Norman Kleeblatt, former chief curator of the Jewish Museum (New York, NY), on August 10.

In his debut solo exhibition at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Yefman exhibits sculptural and two-dimensional installations created over the past decade. Yefman’s practice explores a unique artistic language defined by brightly colored knitted sculptures of grotesque, fluid, multi-organ beings. The knitted work becomes an extension of the body, and felting becomes a memorialization of the experiences held within that body. Though knitting and felting are commonly associated with female, queer, and domestic tasks that would traditionally fall into a strictly decorative category, Yefman redefines them into works that honor a memory within the individual to provide a sense of justice and new presence in the world. These soft objects that were once read as defense mechanisms representing a vulnerable or threatened body are transformed into a new relationship with social injustices.