selected projects
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When the Face Ends (2018)
Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art
“When the Face Ends” refers to the state/being of a human face. A face never really exists in the present. Its appearance is documentation of the history of that face and simultaneously produces the future. This analogy lends itself to themes of ‘nowness’, materiality and experience. The exhibition uses art as a space to reflect and explore these ideas.
Timothy Morton describes time as, “a spooky shifting that haunts itself, slightly in front or behind itself, the rippling play of light and shadow in the pond water reflected on the undersid of a sundial on a late summer afternoon, a vibrant stillness that is far from static.” [1]
The inherent instability, ambiguity and lack of clarity in the concept of time is a quality that is always present in art practices, though not always acknowledged. The exhibition focuses on time, matter and experience by amalgamating these ideas into artworks.
Both Peter Navratil’s untitled sculpture and Kara Sikora’s Painting Machine are interactive; th form and future of the work is left to the audience to define, which reifies the ambiguous qualities of the history of the artwork and the idea of creative authorship. Sikora’s Slab and Slab Drawing juxtapose this idea with a literal insight into an art-making process, the heav and still artwork is accompanied by its preliminary drawn plan. These works are shown alongside each other to consider process and form in art.
Kyle Berthaudin’s untitled sock sculpture and Pip Dryden’s doll sculpture use repurposed readymade objects to compose the artworks. The materials are left recognizable, referencing their commercial and personal histories, placing their object hood in a state of uncertainty and tension.
Arden Boehm’s Bear, Dragon, Piglet, Elephant & Bunny are plush toys which have been vacuum sealed tightly into plastic bags. The toys take on new forms that are not typical of their intended production. Carmen Winther’s untitled sculptures operate in a similar way, but instead use utilitarian/industrial materials that are suited with ripstop nylon skins, creating formation that are visceral and suggestive. Boehm and Winther’s works are dubious spectres complicated amalgamations of familiarity, anxiety, and ghostly materiality.
“When the Face Ends” incorporates objecthood into nowness by contextualizing everyday materials in ambiguity and speculation.
[1]
“HUMANKIND: Solidarity with Non-Human People.” by TIMOTHY MORTON, VERSO, 2018, p. 78.
Artists: Kyle Berthaudin
Arden Boehm
Pip Dryden
Peter Navratil
Kara Sikora
Carmen Winther
Curated by Mathew Glenn & Evan Berg