Whitespace Fall Exhibitions (fridays)

From the venue:

The Art of Staying - Shana Robbins

 
Resisting the codes and powers of dominant orderings, The Art of Staying calls for a deeper recognition of rivers, forests, animals, and humans as living entities with intrinsic value beyond measure or utility.

Rooted in an ethics of joy, this exhibition envisions vital, enduring bodies—bodies that survive, connect, and co-create spaces of belonging through gestures of presence. They are posthuman beings “fully immersed in and immanent to a network of non-human relations: animal, vegetable, viral, technological” (Braidotti), and cosmic. Staying embodies both vulnerability and resistance, generating strength grounded in positivity. It is the act of holding pain without being undone by it.

This work invites a more generous cosmology of abundance enfolded in care, reciprocity, and celebration for all life.
exhibit page here

The Network - Sabre Esler

The Network is an installation consisting of woven wire, laser cut numbers, and a spiral of blue circles with a time-lapse video of clouds playing over the blue vortex. Each component works together to describe the digital nature of our connections and communications. The wire is woven similar to root structures of Bermuda grass, which seems to have no beginning or end. This concept was explored by philosophers who said our society doesn’t share and learn by a tree of knowledge, but by rhizome structures found in plant roots. The 1/0 plexiglass numbers describe the invisible digital data-driven world amidst a swirl of blue circles in a vortex pattern found in cosmic energy systems. The time-lapse video of clouds moving across the composition is a metaphor about the digital cloud where our personal data is held. I am interested in how ideas pass from one person to another in today’s social media world. I am curious how computers, social media and software capabilities have changed our communications and memories which is why I made this installation.

exhibit page here

Cleave - Laura Bell

Cleave is a site-specific installation that delves into my relationship to the natural world from the vantage of memory, emotion, and observation. This connection is grounded by astonishment and hope but also shaped by grief. Within that dialog is an ongoing process of acceptance that destruction and change are inevitable and necessary for growth and renewal. While the work mourns damage and loss, it ultimately pays homage to the interwoven moments of wonder, mystery, and beauty. There is solace to be found in the persistence of nature and in recognizing the inextricable ties that physically unite humans with the living world.

exhibit page here

Sideroads in Stereoscope - Serena Perrone

Sideroads in Stereoscope (looping animated gif, duration variable, 2020) combines imagery of Iceland and Sicily in side-by-side landscapes. The title borrows from the book of poetry Sideroads by the late Icelandic poet Jonas Thorbjarnarson who died in Italy in 2012. The looping gif consists of close to 200 postage-stamp sized, toned cyanotypes of the Icelandic and Sicilian landscape that bear uncanny resemblances to one another. Often shot by the artist through the windows of moving cars or while walking in remote areas like lava tubes, basalt caves and rocky beaches, these quickly-framed images are presented side-by side as if they were two views of the same scene from slightly different perspectives, as would be done to create a stereoscope, a photographic effect that fools the eye into superimposing two scenes, resulting in the sensation of seeing an image in 3-D. The flickering pace, distortion and small scale assist in putting the focus on the similarity of the forms rather than the details of the two landscapes, which, devoid of their natural colors, could be confused one for the other. This mimics the sensations of dislocation experienced by the artist during an intense sequence of consecutive trips between the two volcanic terrains in a single year.

exhibit page here