Image: Lauren Cohen, Trace Scar. Photographic series.1990 - Ongoing
August 9 - 23, 2019
Friday, August 9th 6-8 pm - Opening Reception
Wednesday, August 21st 6pm - SONIC MUD Performance by Julia Elsas, Kenny Wollesen, Kirk Knuffke and Mike Irwin
Curated by Elisa Gutiérrez Eriksen
With works by Yasmeen Abdallah, Keren Anavy, Niamul Bari, Frank Born, Jade Chan, Lauren Cohen, Julia Elsas, Lauren Gidwitz, Kathie Halfin + Bingying (Emma) Yi, Tenaya Izu, Daniel Jay Genova, Tadasuke Jinno, Sydney M. King, Abigail Levine, Ioana Manolache, Caitlyn McLaughlin, Robert Melzmuf, Elizabeth Moran, Joshua Nierodzinski, Xavier Alexander Petromelis, Jelena Prljević, Andrew Schwartz, Liza Sokolovskaya and Elena Soterakis
The Weight of the Temporary brings together the work of 25 artists with different perspectives, disciplines, and interests in an effort to explore human adaptation both to and through changing conditions, and living through the heaviness of a moment.
While speaking with the artists in preparation for this exhibition, we often discussed ideas of consumption, the earth getting warmer, relationships with family and loved ones, childhood experiences, traditions, womanhood, feminisms, death, even religion and its contemporary value, and the ways in which we all cope and unfold in our world(s). Whether it is a thought, a landscape, a home, a memory, an exchange, a movement, or just our attention, the momentary aspect of things and events connects us all in impactful ways.
The play on words in this exhibition’s title is reminiscent of Octavio Paz’s ideas in his book The Grammarian Monkey, where he speaks about fixity as a momentary quality and attempts to define what it means “to go to an end.” Paz plays incessantly with language and describes life as an ongoing search, a constant tug between movement and stillness, between the present and the headspace, between the specific goals in life and the uncertainty of the next instant. Similarly, the pieces that have come together in this exhibition remain tied by a continuous blending of
the self with the other,
the self with the outside,
the self with a home,
the self with history,
the self with language,
the self in movement,
the self with nature,
the self with itself,
the self within itself.
The metaphysical opposition of weight and time coexist and thus evoke the notion of occupying two spaces simultaneously, like a musical instrument that slaps, a text that performs, a white noise image, an encounter without regard, space food as a sign of social upper mobility, shifting in a fixed landscape, noise emotions, and the list could go on.
The vagueness of the terms, the finitude of the idea, the embedded cycle without an end… The temporary character of any ‘thing’ is correlated to its importance and to the question of how we measure it –is there in fact a better question? Certainly, the intersectional forces of race, class, gender, provenance, ability, influence, and experience will be definitive in the experience of being in the world(1).
1.After Feminist Data Visualization, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein
