Curatorial Essays
1. "Next Post "Exhibition Page
"Next Post , an impressive show of 18 simultaneous solo projects by artists from Europe and America.
It grabs your attention from the moment you walk in the door." -- New York Times Voted Best Show In A Commercial Gallery Nationally 2009 International Association of Art Critics
NEXT POST ... is a foray into the next paradigm of art. Blog posts dispense with rules and manners. Jettisoning traditional brushes and technique, each artist uses space, new materials, color, and light as vocabulary of a hybrid visual vernacular. These projects are all BIG, utilizing maximum amplitude to put the potential of art to the test. NEXT POST material and light divulge facets of emotion, the oblique language of the psyche. Here postmodern ruses, wit, and theory are present not as the entirety of a gimmicky one-liner, but as icing on the cake.
2. "Warp & Woof "Exhibition Page
Warp : the tightly stretched lengthwise core of a fabric. Woof : threads woven between the warp to create purposeful pattern. These two words, of industrial mechanical weaving, function as both noun and verb simultaneously. Often used together as a metaphoric expression for an underlying infrastructure on which a personality or culture is sown.
The Warp & Woof of these Solo Projects in this 20,000 sq. ft. exhibition comes alive in an organic process that builds on itself a layer at a time, much as an outfit
ensemble progressively suits the body preceding a party. Encounter an orchestration that trumps any previous expected pattern, or repetitive status quo of art fashion, by proffering a raw "more". This maneuver tailors a post contemporary seam of interaction & connectivity in the imbued metamorphosis of space & time.
Today, glass fiber tangibly knits us together in a world-wide digital data community much like the Inca's Khipu or decimal system of "talking" knots. The ethernet conveys and stores our collective memory, commerce, news, personal interaction and archives. Accumulating ever more, every second... it is NOT static. Beyond a repository, it’s a biotic entity.
On the network where smartdevice multimedia is woven together, mortals are simultaneously the receiver/witness, and the voice-persona - equal part participant & creator. Always "on", users concurrently become both: fabric & action, warp & woof, noun & verb.
Quantum physicists - deploy the colossal Hadron Collider to smash apart the strands (weft) of elements in order to scrutinize the behavior of infinitesimal particles. However, they are at a loss to precisely delineate what is transpiring at the sub-quark constituent level because no language exists to do so. Nothing remains the same. Down to the miniscule particle level, everything ultimately concedes vibration. Nothing is static - a continual pulsating gesticulation.
Similarly, the Native American Lakota language has almost no linguistic objects, but primarily communicates with (non-objective) words of action. Verbs are the only word class that is obligatory in Lakota sentences. The dialect has numerous ways to describe subtle aspects of social behavior, personal attributes, and metaphors – All based on nature. Thus Lakota verbal intuitiveness communicates the innate impermanence of all things thus honoring the vibratory nature of the universe.
Coming to life, in the flourishing mythos of this once thriving silk manufacturing mill, are multiple objects & constructs. Creations brought into existence along a Warp & Woof of ocular reverberation. Experience fabrications by artists who pioneer a resonating aesthetic experience. Their respective works visually burst out with heartfelt invitational gestures offering:
3. "Flow Follow Flow "Exhibition Page
In quest for Next Art, Flow Follow Flow orchestrates a move beyond the
bankrupt age of conceptual replication into a state of designed
phenomenology. The delectation of radiant and responsive elements is
served up as a tangy marinade, releasing us from a starvation diet of
post war contemporary.
In the soaring expanse of cathedral-vaulted space, with a
Csikszentmihalyi’s "self-absorbed, contemplative awareness," viewers
interact with voluminous, sensory/auditory concoctions.
These psychological and rhythmic corporeal works embody an
immersive Zen or Aha moment - known to artists, musicians and athletes
alike as being ‘in the Zone.’
With laser-focus concentration, in-Flow emotions and senses are not
just channeled, but heightened. In sustained momentum, Flow spawns a
feeling of capricious accord, even rapture.
4. "Outsight Inn "Exhibition Page
With over 220 color-lush objects on three floors, Outsight Inn is a cloister for regenerative visual systems. In quantum physics the "observer effect" refers to changes that the act of observation makes on the phenomenon being experienced. Witness 28 Solo Projects where examination flips the commonplace inside out. Similar to the topological single sided Klein/Möbius bottle, art interiors meld with their own exteriors, sum greater than whole. These artworks radiate a seductive invitation, simultaneously hiding and revealing a latent reward for each guest. Sequestered visceral energy is released through the sheer physics, economics, or memory of ones sensory encounter with these adroit presentations. Ride the wave, or is it a particle? Outsight Inn opens the ludic door to a quantum mindset for an interlude in real time.
5. "Vessel "Exhibition Page
This exhibition explores Next art as conduit, Vessel . These items of depth transport and continue to deliver the goods beyond first glance. In ship to shore communication, a message floats from the mother ship out to a new land, new recipients. Here a circulatory system is launched, imploding the deflective icy surface of contemporary art's banality. Sentient synapses fire up the biological percolation that underlies perception. Likewise, these artworks spawn a regenerative reciprocation between object and perceiver.
All essays © Rupert Ravens