CURRENT EXHIBITION
June 1 – July 1, 2022: Moving | Curator: Tobias Fike
In “Moving” curated by Tobias Fike, artists examine art’s ability to affect us, cross space, and flow through time. Using a wide variety of visual and auditory modalities, the viewer is transported to intensely intimate moments that hold the power to disconcert or entice. “Moving” invites us to look more closely, the reconsider the context of the places we inhabit, and to give attention to the overlooked moments that make up our everyday lives.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
September 1 – October 1, 2021: Magic Stillness | Curators: Amanda Case Millis and Laura Vahlberg
“There is nothing more surreal, nothing more abstract than reality.” The words and work of the 20th Century painter Giorgio Morandi are relevant today as our individual and collective reality has been redefined over the past year and a half. Morandi lived a solitary life; he created hundreds of still life paintings of mundane objects, constantly rearranging them, resulting in images that emit a sense of magical stillness. Similarly, in the landscape Morandi distilled what he saw into compelling compositions. Morandi painted what he observed, synthesized with his own sense of abstraction. Amanda Case Millis and Laura Vahlberg have chosen artists who are pushing the idea of examining and elevating the mundane. The show reviews the artistic experience when painting subjects close at hand becomes a necessity. It celebrates the continued influence of Morandi and the interpretation of seen reality in the everyday through painting.
July 15 – August 15, 2020: WINDOW MOOD | Curator: Brit Pruiksma
Inspired both by Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “I’m in a Window Mood” and the current Coronavirus pandemic, this exhibition explores the time many of us have passed watching the world through our windows. What we see out of our windows offers us a constant in that the view is familiar to us. This makes us feel safe when many unknowns abound. But there is also an inconsistency provided to us through our window view. Each view is altered by natural elements; the wind through the trees, melting snow on the ground, growing flowers, dog walkers, cars driving past, or birds flying by, all of which serve to break up the monotony of lockdown. Windows provide us with a peaceful stimulation, away from the TV and the internet, at a time when we need it most.
June 15 – July 15: Breakdown | Curator: Andrea Burgay
Breaking things down is catalytic. Once the components of something can be investigated, they can be understood, and reworked. It is a very human compulsion, the desire to take things apart to understand them and clearly see what they are made of. This impulse to poke, prod, scratch and tear, to pull things apart, may uncover faulty workings and unstable structures. Or it may create elements now unrecognizable, holding the potential to become something utterly transformed. The artists in Breakdown physically destroy, deconstruct and disassemble. They break down books, images, raw materials and their own artwork. The fragments that remain are resurrected and integrated, revealing the limitless possibilities of their source materials. New narratives are created, poking holes in outmoded ways of seeing the world. Reassembled, the broken pieces reveal meaning and visions, showing us ways to rebuild.
May 15 – June 15: All In This Together | Curator: Lauri Lynnxe Murphy
The aphorism “we are all in this together” has been used during the Covid-19 pandemic to the point of cliche but it is still only humans we are including in the “we” mentioned. Western culture has seen humans as separate from nature but a global pandemic has reminded us that all life is connected, from animals to viruses, and all have an instinct for survival. The work in this show explores our interconnectedness, with artists exploring the junctions of science and art through work with bacteria, animals, and nature.
May 15 – June 15: Loading the Virtual Machine… | Curator: Christine Renc-Carter
Now more than ever, our livelihood and connection to the outside world depends on technological know-how while we are at the whim of a decent wifi connection. While in quarantine, we exist in this liminal state of being—our own perception of the passage of time is distorted by the uprooting of our daily routines, the barrage of a 24-hour news cycle, and our emotional reaction to intangible, unknown forces. While immersed in our art practice, time expands, yet, it speeds up when fear forces us into survival mode. In this disorienting state of transition, we find solace in creativity. Making things with our hands within the confines of our studio, our work becomes a lifeline from what we once knew to what is to become as we dive into the virtual abyss of cat videos and chatter made of 1’s and 0’s—an infinite void of time and space. This exhibition addresses the unknown, as artists translate what we cannot see into a tangible entity—the psychological effects of the perceived passage of time. By grappling with our own perception of time while in isolation, we begin to understand how it alters our own sense of reality and how we translate the physicality of our work in the virtual realm. We flood the “virtual machine” in an attempt to connect, express and engage until we can get time back on our side.
April 15 – May 15: Masters of the Universe | Curator: Joshua Field
As artists retreat into their homes and studios amid a global pandemic, we will often pursue the making of our own worlds; sometimes havens which give us the illusion of control, sometimes fantasies of a world that is profoundly different from our current reality, and sometimes dystopian recreations of the world as it is in this moment. This exhibition features work in which artists, working in a new isolation, pursue the creation of their own universe.
April 15 – May 15: home:body | Curator: Shayna Cohn
Time is measured in our exchanges. If we cannot be in and of the world and the body must remain at rest, it is the mind that moves in place. Within the confines of our homes is where “life begins …. enclosed, protected and warm …” 1, we see the things we have amassed and we see ourselves reflected in them. Our histories, our taste, proof of our material existence, and of the passing of time. And yet, when in isolation, new rituals manifest and we become our own mystic saviors. This exhibition examines the artists’ relationship with the places that we call home and the daydreams that emanate from that center point of our lives.
1. Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space