In Practice: Total Disbelief considers artistic engagements with dimensions of doubt as they contribute to the formation of social life. Across media, the works in the exhibition engage formal tools that uphold belief and produce what we consider to be true – narrative and cinematic tropes, photographic technologies, empiricism, and others – and use them to make any number of other truth claims. A position of disbelief may see these aesthetic conventions as valid, but still delimited by external forces, as if they are suggesting something, but not the right thing, or not saying all they can or could say.

While characterized on one hand by the clean slate of a baseline lack of faith, an active engagement with disbelief also means taking stock of astonishment, navigating defense mechanisms, and pitting skepticism against a real desire to be convinced and to know. In Practice: Total Disbelief posits that artworks are the products and by-products of these dynamics, appearing as objects, images, and activities that sustain uncertainty, not in the least about the capacities of the art object itself. The exhibition features newly commissioned works by: Qais Assali, Andrew Cannon, Jesse Chun, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Ficus Interfaith, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Laurie Kang, Devin Kenny and Andrea Solstad, K.R.M. Mooney, sidony o’neal, Mariana Silva, Jordan Strafer, and Andrew Norman Wilson and is curated by Kyle Dancewicz, SculptureCenter’s Director of Exhibitions and Programs.

The In Practice open call program supports emerging artists and curators in creating new work for exhibition at SculptureCenter. Since 2003, In Practice has supported more than 200 emerging artists with the essential resources of space, funding, time, and administrative support to help turn their ideas into reality.

Exemplifying the spirit of SculptureCenter's mission, In Practice provides new ways to discover the most innovative artwork, foster experimentation, introduce audiences to emerging talent and new ideas, and give participants the opportunity to develop and present work in what is often their first institutional exhibition in New York City. Past In Practice participants include: Korakrit Arunanondchai, Fia Backström, A.K. Burns, Crystal Z Campbell, Aleksandra Domanović, Brendan Fernandes, Raque Ford, Jules Gimbrone, Samara Golden, Ellen Harvey, Madeline Hollander, Elizabeth Jaeger, Meredith James, Baseera Khan, Simone Leigh, Molly Lowe, Justin Matherly, Virginia Overton, Essex Olivares, Marlo Pascual, Sean Raspet, Rachel Rose, Xaviera Simmons, Josh Smith, Valerie Snobeck, Agathe Snow, Marianne Vitale, and Jon Wang, among many others.