Morris Adjmi Architects

Sonya Blesofsky is an installation artist based in Brooklyn New York. Her site-responsive work deals with urban change–how the unfixed nature of the city presents itself as an endless pattern of decline and growth. Architectural decay and structural failure, combined with hyper-accelerated development, create the continuous and cyclical layering of history that serves as her inspiration and source material. Each sculptural artwork she creates is site-specific–literally made from or attached to the space in which it is installed–and is emblematic of the history of that place. Blesofsky works in a direct manner, improvising with materials on-site. Through each architectural intervention, she intends to highlight traces of the past as a way to memorialize what came before, frame the present, and inform the future.

Blesofsky's installations at the MA office come from her 2022 exhibition "Some Nobel Parts" at Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York. At the exhibition, Blesofsky erected six monumental columns in the gallery. The columns follow the Doric order and appear to be in various degrees of finish. Inner structures are revealed, drips of material remain, and equally monumental blades used to carve such forms are left standing in position. A portion of gallery walls were also covered by plaster molding in the Georgian style (commonly used in official US government buildings and later called the Federal style). Despite their scale and complete exposure of the process of their creation, the stark contrast between architectural styles of the sculpture and space is pronounced, appearing as if they were transported from a Roman atrium or Monticello. Like many urban renovations and development, Blesofsky’s creations appear to disrupt the formerly dominant architectural narrative of the space and locale.

Blesofsky received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and BA from UC Santa Cruz. She has received numerous residencies and fellowships, including at Urban Glass, the Museum of Arts and Design, California Legion of Honor, Smack Mellon, Vermont Studio Center, Iaspis Konstnarsnamden, and MacDowell Colony. Blesofsky’s work has been shown at galleries throughout New York and the United States and has been reviewed in The Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail and ArtForum. Blesofsky was recently awarded a Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She currently teaches sculpture at Purchase College, The Jewish Museum, and Parsons The Newschool, and works with private students.