Institute of Contemporary Art Miami ICA Miami

“A Public Character” marks the first major museum presentation of work by Shannon Ebner comprising photography, sculpture, installation and video. The exhibition underscores Ebner’s self-reflexive approach to the image through language and architecture.

The exhibition includes a dramatic presentation of works from Ebner’s ongoing series “Black Box Collision A” which, since 2012, has seen the artist photograph the letter “A” mined from the vestiges of signs, advertisements, messages, and other modes of visual communication. As the first museum exhibition to survey Ebner’s “Black Box Collision A” series, “A Public Character” demonstrates the artist’s efforts to build a catalogue of images, and reflect on the unstable nature of such an archive.

The exhibition also traces the artist’s efforts to re-insert her typographical imagery into the public realm, notably through A HUDSON YARD, a collaborative project with David Reinfurt. A PUBLIC CHARACTER, a new video by the artist, edited by Erika Vogt and scored by Alex Waterman, creates a physical and optical experience of those images’ dynamic lives amidst the Chelsea and Meatpacking District neighborhoods of New York as they rapidly develop. Ebner’s physical constructions of language are made physically manifest by a new sculpture depicting the letter “A.”

Shannon Ebner (b. 1971, Englewood, New Jersey) earned her BA from Bard College in 1993 and her MFA from Yale University in 2000. Solo exhibitions include kaufmann repetto, Milan (2010); Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2010); Wallspace, New York (2009, 2007, 2005); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City (2007). The lives and works in Los Angeles, where she teaches at USC’s Roski School of Fine Arts.