Month: April 2021
Elementor #15614
Elementor #15597
Show Statement
Investigation of a Dream-Like State explores the tensions and intersections between the gentleness of our dream-states and the harsh realities of everyday life. Artists in the exhibition explore different types of dreams, from dreams of aspiration and dreams conjured by the imagination, to the dreams we have at night.. Reality tends to get blurred by our own memories of it. We sometimes remember what we felt in the moment, not necessary its true objective nature. Artists in this exhibition address this blur between the truth and the dream. The show is presented online only, which serves to underscore the blurring of reality in dreamlike, invented states and reality, something that often happens in an exaggerated way online
Every artist featured in the show utilizes their medium as a gentle method for conceptual framework. Dreams can be gentle and simple, just as the artists’ work may feel at first glance. All the creations may make a viewer feel humbled and light, but this is just to lure them in like a lullaby would to a deep sleep. Only here the viewers are made to jolt awake and become aware. The animations Singing Suns, by Shahzia Sikander and Pink Dot‚ by Takeshi Murata utilize fragmentations and abstraction to explore how creation of all kinds is made. Camille Norment’s installation Rapture, produces a calm meditation while at the same time producing an undercurrent of tension to speak about hidden trauma in one’s self and history. Andrea Barwick’s Sleeping Nightmares directly plays upon one’s memory being mixed up between nightmares and bliss, unsure of the world around. At first glance these works will feel gentle, but all have strong messages. Demanding to be seen, heard, felt, breaking out of the “dreamstate” or this blissful state people want to believe is their true reality.
There is a delicate relationship between one’s perceptions of what goes on around them in the world being created from their own memories and experiences. This does not always equal the true state of reality that has happened. There is a calm between someone’s body and mind that needs to be broken and unblurred to focus on the harsh realities. Investigation of a Dream-like state aims to do just that. By bringing ourselves out of our intimate dream states to the real world we keep pushed away. We tend to hold onto our dreams to act as a protection to ourselves.
Phase of Puppets
STATEMENT!
I’m Pissed, Flynn Forester 2021
I Didn’t Know I Loved You, Sharon Hayes 2009
The Tadao Ando Craft Machine, Amor Munoz 2018
Show Statement
THE THINGS WE DONT KNOW
Art sometimes seems to appear out of thin air. From the vantage of the audience, It can seem as if the ideas behind the art they’re viewing appeared magically, it’s thoroughly thought out, and executed without effort. What they don’t often realize is that in many cases, endless hours has gone into research and thinking through the ideas. The Things We Don’t Know highlights a collection of artists whose research is at the core of their work and the base of their creative process. The show makes visible the ways that these artists use their work as an alternative to writing a research paper and a way to showcase their findings in creative and innovative ways.
In an age that is constantly out with the old and in with the new, we still present and view research in the same formal essay paper style. The Things We Don’t Know is meant to challenge what is considered research and what is viewed as a reliable source of information. What does it mean to make a work of art? What are you learning from the work? From the artist? From being a viewer?
This online exhibition showcases the work from Rachel Rose, Amor Munoz, Sharon Hayes, and Flynn Forester. Rachel Rose uses her work to explore different experiences of her life and researches them further. In her work Everything and More she took the experience of going to see the movie Gravity in theaters and having a dissociative episode afterwards into a work of art that encapsulates the experience she had after seeing the film. For the work, she interviewed an astronaut about their experiences of going into space and how it felt to return back home and grapple with mortality at the scale from which the earth seems like a marble. Amor Munoz gives jobs to those in need and allows them to learn useful skills that are transferred back to their homes and communities. Munoz teaches women from around the community about circuits and textiles and through the workshops she provides while also collecting materials for large scale works of art. Sharon Hayes connects the past with the present using queer love as a vessel. She repurposes political texts, creating a discourse with modern struggle and queer political activism. Flynn Forester has had to learn how to navigate bathrooms and through his work, Pissed Reimaged, displays the endless hours spent researching how to be trans and the sacrifices they go through to have this knowledge. Learning you’re transgender is not something that just happens, its something that is discovered, researched, tested, theorized over, and proved through experimentation and time.
