simpler times x concerning the spiritual x and men turned their faces from there
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Noise/Touch
When: Saturday + Sunday, November 19-20, 2016, 6-8PM
Where: Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Exploring experiential and performative works with an intention of fostering intimate interactions between participating artists and viewers, BCA Fall 2016 Visual Artist Resident Nabeela Vega and Chloe Wong present Noise/Touch, a two night performance event in the BCA’s Black Box Theatre. Developed during Vega’s residency at the BCA, the event forms part of the artist’s ongoing project VIX: Virtual International Exchange, which brings together national and international artists to contemplate ideas of intimacy and queering spaces, places and gestures.”
Learn more about participating artists here.
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Plenty
When: On view November 19, 2016 through January 14, 2017
Opening Reception: November 19, 2016, 4-6PM
Where: 13 Forest Gallery, 167A Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why:“As another year closes, we have Plenty to be thankful for!
13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Plenty 2016, our ninth annual holiday exhibition. Opening just in time for Thanksgiving, Plenty celebrates the work of 49 New England artists, a number of whom are exhibiting with us for the first time. Not only does Plenty recognize a multitude of makers, but it also celebrates artistic media of all kinds – painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and sculpture are all represented. Take part in this visual feast as we celebrate the best of 2016 and ring in the new year!
Most works featured in Plenty are modest in size and budget and make great holiday gifts. As you’ll see, we’ve also been busy stocking up on our unique collection of handmade ceramics, jewelry and glasswork as well as holiday ornaments, cards and toys for young and old.
Preview the exhibition with the slide show, below, and be sure to join us on Saturday, November 19, as we mark the opening of Plenty with a reception from 4-6 pm.”
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Sally Fine | SeaChange
When: On view through December 18, 2016
Opening Reception: November 19, 5:00-8:00pM
Where: Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA, 02118
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Sally S. Fine’s solo exhibition of new sculpture, SeaChange, will be on view at Boston Sculptors Gallery November 16 through December 18, 2016. SeaChange explores the impact of climate change, pollution and overfishing on sea creatures. Embracing a wide range of materials and processes, Fine’s work includes carved wood, cast and slumped glass, riveted metal, and electroluminescent wire. Her sculptural shipwrecks are hybrids—part fish, part ship, part sea— while the sea creatures she depicts are both realistic and visionary. Fine focuses attention not only on those creatures whose survival is in danger, but also on species that are adapting to climate change. Fine also examines symbiotic relationships and the balance between predator and prey. The work is inspired by historical, fictional, and scientific sources. Melville’s Moby Dick and Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea provide a dramatic context, while the artist’s experience as a scuba
diver also informs the work.”
Also on view..
Leslie Wilcox | LEEPS: Leap of Faith Forward
What/Why: Learn more about the exhibition here!
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Plas-tastic Party
When: Friday November 18, 6-8PM
Where: Fitchburg Art Museum, 185 Elm Street, Fitchburg, MA 01420
How: Official Website
Cost: $25 non-members | $20 members
What/Why: “Start your weekend with a night out at the museum!
This Friday, come to FAM for a Plas-tastic celebration. See our popular exhibit Plastic Imagination and enjoy music by DJ Elements of Surprise, hot hors d’oeuvres, and a cash bar (one FREE drink voucher with your ticket purchase).”
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In Place- Painting sculpture and photography by Mia Cross and Cory Munro Shea
When: November 17- December 18, 2016
Opening Reception: Reception November 19, 5-7pm
Where: Fountain Street Fine Art, 59 Fountain Street, Framingham MA 01702
How: Official Website
What/Why:“Starting on November 17, Fountain Street Gallery in Framingham opens a new exhibit: “In Place,” featuring the work of two Boston-area artists, both Framingham natives, Cory Munro Shea and Mia Cross.
Cory Munro Shea is a working artist and arts administrator residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her artwork has appeared in several galleries in the New England area. Shea’s work explores the idea of expectation crashing into reality, most often through mix-media photography. In this particular exhibition, Shea also branches into 3D installation work.
Mia Cross is a Framingham native who graduated from Boston University in 2014 with a double major in painting and sculpture. Since graduating Cross has shown in many Boston-area spaces, including the Danforth Museum of Art, the Attleboro Arts Museum, and several galleries in Boston’s South End. Cross explores the figure through oil painting and life-size sculpture. She currently works out of her studio in Framingham.”
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Concerning the Spiritual
When: On view through December 31, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday November 18, 8-11PM
Where: Matter & Light, 63 Thayer Street, Boston, MA 02116
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Concerning the Spiritual in Abstract Art.”
A group exhibition featuring work from Willem de Kooning, John Walker, Bill Jensen, Natalie Edgar and many more, on view from Nov. 18 – Dec. 31
Pre-reception musical performance at 6:30 pm from Chimera New Music
Spiritual ambition in art is nothing new. From the myriad, worldwide traditions of sacred art to Hegel’s assertion that the true content of art is “the Divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit,” many artists have understood their vocation as that of mediator between spirit and matter. Historically, most visual art has been in some degree mimetic, and sacred art is no exception.
However, beginning with Wassily Kandinsky’s pioneering work in pure abstraction and his theorizing about “The Spiritual in Art,” many of the most spiritually ambitious visual artists of the modern age have found that their ambitions are best served by the stripped down, elemental language of abstraction. This type of ambition motivated many of the Abstract Expressionist painters who rose to prominence in mid-century New York, and it motivates many visual artists working in 2016.
The question is: why? Why might an artwork of abstracted color, texture, shape, etc. be a better vehicle for the exploration of spiritual realities than a picture of a real-world thing? To explore this question, Matter & Light is hosting a broad-ranging group show of established and emerging artists whose spiritual concerns have motivated them to work in an abstract vein.”
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SLAM Opening Day
When: Sunday November 20, 10:00AM-8:00PM
Where: Somerville Local Arts Mall, 337 Somerville Ave., Somerville, Massachusetts 02143
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Come experience opening day of our pop-up shop, featuring the varied works of 33 local artists! Get started on your holiday shopping and support your local creative community!”
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POISE: Peter Christian Johnson
When: On view November 18–December 31
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 19, 4–6pm
Where: Ferrin Contemporary, 1315 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “An exhibition of ceramic sculpture exploring the tension between acts of labor and collapse, precision and failure. It is a meditation on entropy using Gothic cathedrals as a foil to examine the dichotomy of beauty and loss.”
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Brickbottom Open Studios
When: November 19+20, 2016, 12-6PM
Where: Brickbottom Studios, 1 Fitchburg Street, Somerville, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Brickbottom Artists’ Building will host its 29th annual Open Studios—one of the oldest open studio events in Somerville—on November 19 & 20, 2016, from 12-6pm each day. Over 60 artists will open their live-work studios to the public, showing and selling work in a wide variety of media and formats. A block away, the 50+ artists of Joy Street Studios will open their doors as well, many offering demonstrations of their methods and working techniques.”
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boXed
When: On view November 19 through December 18, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday November 19, 3-5PM
Where: Nave Gallery, 155 Powderhouse Blvd, Somerville, MA 02144
How: Official Website
What/Why: “What’s a box? In an accidentally timely way, this show is about what constitutes, is kept out from, is constricted by, could be nurtured by, memorializes, questions, endangers, deconstructs, skirts the edges of, remains curious in, explodes from, revels in, is made less clear by, is made more seer by, starts the tears by, smarts and veers by, and could election engineer via the nature of being boXed.”
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Out of the Woods: Fairy Tales Re-imagined
When: On view through December 17, 2016
Where: Nave Gallery Annex, 53 Chester Street, Somerville, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Fairy tales, myths, legends, and folk tales, are often the inspiration for contemporary works of literature, film, and art. They continue to fascinate and charm audiences of all ages. Archetypes and traditional story telling can become a vehicle to explore and address a myriad of issues specific to life of today. The narrative structure of these writings provide the framework to explore issues like personal history, identity, gender politics, human nature, and many other topics.”
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A Conversation with Tal Gafny & Alyssa Carson
When: Saturday November 19, 2-4PM
Where: New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newton, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Join us for a special conversation between Israel-based artist Tal Gafny and her 15 year old collaborator, Alyssa Carson.
Tal and Alyssa have been engaged in a cross-generational, cross-national collaboration since initially connecting over Carson’s well-known, early efforts to become an astronaut on the first shuttle to Mars. Since then, they have been creating floor installations of portal-like 3-D stickers, which can be seen in the New Art Center’s exhibition, Obstacle Course.
Prior to the conversation, which will be hosted via Skype, we will screen a brief documentary outlining Alyssa Carson’s accomplishments in her quest to become “generation mars.”
This event is presented in conjunction with Obstacle Course, which performs, examines and critiques collaboration in contemporary art making. In the included works, artists and viewers alike advise, adapt, demand, play, teach, listen and translate. With drawing, sculpture, photography, video, writing, and performance, the exhibition complicates utopian ideas about working together, and instead examines the offerings and challenges of collaborative and delegated making.”
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Amy Baxter MacDonald: People and Places
When: On view through December 15, 2016
Where: FP3 Gallery, 346 Congress Street, Boston, MA
How: Official Website
What/Why:“People and Places reflects artist and animator Amy Baxter MacDonald’s interest in motion, and her respect for the immediacy and honesty of the gesture or first impression. She uses a wide variety of materials, but traces of the piece’s beginnings usually remain regardless of whether her subjects are drawn or painted. Also evident is MacDonald’s love for the materiality of traditional media, which are generally not part of her digital animation work.
Most work is done from either direct observation or from sketches that were done on location. Apple Cottage, Graveyard, and Gold Creek are most recent, from this summer’s working vacation in Plymouth, VT. The chairs are from the artist’s former studios in Fort Point and Provincetown. Fighters were sketched at The Club in Fort Point, Eli in Robe was painted at the artist’s residence at 249 A Street, and Neighbors are from Boston Magazine’s photo of a Fort Point event. The artist does paint portraits, but the figurative work shown here celebrates gesture, line and surface more than the likeness of the sitter.”
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deCordova New England Biennial
When: On view through March 26, 2017
Where: deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Rd, Lincoln, MA 01773
How: Official Website
What/Why: “The exhibition will feature sixteen New England-based artists who are making significant contributions to contemporary art in the region. Showcasing the work of painters, sculptors, video artists, book illustrators, performance artists, and photographers, the exhibition will occupy the main galleries of the Museum and extend into the Sculpture Park with new site-specific commissions.
The 2016 deCordova Biennial Artists:
Academy Records (MA)
Ashley Bryan (ME)
Lois Dodd (ME)
Theresa Ganz (RI)
Carly Glovinski (NH)
Tanja Hollander (ME)
Timothy Horn (VT)
Fritz Horstman (CT)
Susan Howe (CT)
Heather Leigh McPherson (RI)
Youjin Moon (MA)
Kelly Nipper (MA)
Jason Noushin (CT)
Tobias Putrih (MA)
Cary Smith (CT)
Craig Stockwell (NH)”
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Edgar Arceneaux: Written in Smoke and Fire
When: On view through January 8, 2017
Where: MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames Street, Bldg. E15, Atrium level, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Edgar Arceneaux’s work in installation, sculpture, drawing, photography, and video, draws inspiration from a wide-ranging set of sources: American history, astronomy, science-fiction, architecture, music, and movies. His solo exhibition at the List Center presents three major, interlocking projects that reflect on history and remembrance, and consider how specific national, cultural narratives change over time. The body of work titled A Book and a Medal (2014) takes inspiration in part from the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and connects 1960s history with the landscape of contemporary, postindustrial American cities. Arceneaux’s recent work The Library of Black Lies (2016) constructs a labyrinthine, Borgesian book repository including various “variations” of books, including volumes by prominent African-American thinkers. The new installation Until, Until, Until (2016), premiering at the List, examines Broadway legend Ben Vereen’s controversial performance at the inaugural celebration for Ronald Reagan in 1981, which was televised nationally in a truncated version and derailed his career for decades. Throughout the exhibition, Arceneaux combines sculptural object, historical record, and fictional text in an effort to complicate the construction and transmission of knowledge.”
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2016 Red Biennial
When: On view through December 21, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, November 18, 6-8pm. Awards at 7pm at the Kathryn Schultz Gallery
Where: Cambridge Art Association, 25 Lowell St, Cambridge, MA 02138
How: Official Website
What/Why: “About the RED Biennial: For more than a decade, the Cambridge Art Association has hosted a fall exhibit, open to artists from across the Northeastern United States, centered around a single color. Both the success of the exhibit series, and the challenge to participating artists, lies in channeling the varied meanings of a color like RED. It is the color of action, violence, heat. It is the color of luck, happiness, and passion. RED is more than a color. Past jurors for the RED Biennial include: Amy Sadao (Director, ICA Philadelphia); Howard Yezerski (Miller Yezerski Gallery); Carl Belz (Rose Art Museum); Jane Farver (MIT List Visual Arts Center); Nick Capasso (Fitchburg Art Museum).”
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Jamie O’Neill: Heavy Metal
When: On view through January 6th, 2017
Opening Reception: November 18, 7-11PM
Where: Lot F Gallery, 145 Pearl St, Boston, MA 02110
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Later this November, Jamie O’Neill will be debuting his new series of realistic paintings at Lot F Gallery. “Heavy Metal” opens on Friday, November 18th, in what will be the artists fourth solo exhibition with the Boston gallery. Honing in on his signature blue collar aesthetic, the artist finds beauty in the slowly decaying world around us.
Well known for his freight trains, cars, boats and cityscapes, many of the artist’s works pop off the canvas, appearing to be three dimensional. Using mostly oil paints, he brings images inspired by growing up in New England and his fondness for graffiti, to life. Sometimes he will top off a piece with a spray-painted tag right before calling it finished. “Heavy Metal” demonstrates Jamie’s technical skill and keen eye for compositions as a painter.
Raised on Nantucket and the South Shore, Jamie O’Neill moved to Jamaica Plain in 1998. Spending the next ten years there, he earned his BFA from the Art Institute of Boston, and has shown at various locations around the city. After leaving Boston in 2008 he lived in San Francisco and then Brooklyn. Jamie now resides in Gloucester with his wife and son.”
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Lunar Attraction
(Scott Listfield)
When: On view through September 4, 2017
Where: Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square (161 Essex St) Salem, Massachusetts 01970
How: Official Website
What/Why: “As Earth’s closest celestial body and only natural satellite, the moon has engaged our curiosity and imagination over millennia and across cultures. Contemporary artists use the moon as both a source of inspiration and investigation. Lunar Attraction features artworks and interactives that explore our longstanding fascination and connection with the moon, ranging from myths about the connection between werewolves and the full moon to the gravitational pull that controls Earth’s tides to the 21st-century international race to build a base on the moon.
Lunar Attraction features works by Michael Benson, Adam David Brown, Craig Dorety, Fred Espenak, Foster + Partners, Sharon Harper, Beth Hoeckel, Mike Libby, Scott Listfield, Vera Lutter, Greg Mort, Takashi Murakami, Young Sook Park, Adrien Segal, Reel Water Productions, Sputniko!, Peter C. Stone, Brian Thomas, Philip Weber and Joseph Wheelwright. “
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Fatma Bucak: And Men Turned Their Faces From There
When: On view through February 05, 2017
Where: David Winton Bell Gallery, 64 College St, Providence, RI 02912
How: Official Website
What/Why:“A conversation on the Turkish-Armenian border, a performance in a minefield surrounding a refugee camp, a cultivation of flowers brought from Syria to the United States: Fatma Bucak’s video performances, photographs, and installations grapple with the poetics, pragmatics, and human consequences of borders. This exhibition presents a selection of Bucak’s recent video performances alongside new works addressing media censorship, state violence, and mass migration.
Often filmed as static shots in single takes, Bucak’s video performances appear as durational photographs, exploring the beauty and otherness of borderlands and the fluidity and contingency of borders themselves. In Obligatory togetherness (2016), she appears locked in a Sisyphean dance with the trunk of a felled palm tree. She struggles to keep the looming figure upright amidst a minefield surrounding the Dakhla refugee camp in Western Sahara, a remnant of the forty-year-long conflict between the government of Morocco and the Sahrawi people.
Bucak regularly collaborates with communities on her projects. Both I see the path (2015) and When I have to cross the bar (2015) result from her work with migrants in southern Texas who crossed the Mexican-U.S. border. Developing from conversations into shared actions, works such as these are efforts towards collaborative self-determination. In the artist’s words, “this is where we create our own order.”
Bucak’s new works address the Kurdish conflict in Turkey and the Turkish-Syrian border near where she was born. Frames containing painted glass obscure landscapes of destruction. Eighty-four photographs and a video performance document the washing of twelve weeks of Turkish newspapers by Bucak and two other women. A paragraph written in ink made from the ashes of a book testifies to the burning of a Kurdish independent publisher’s warehouse; while a lithograph records the cumulative oblivion resulting from carving names of hundreds of victims of enforced disappearances—one over the next—on a broken lithography stone. Finally, a bed of earth cultivates, hopefully, cuttings of Damask roses brought from Damascus, Syria to the United States. The flowers strive to survive and put down roots after a grueling journey and displacement.
The works included in And men turned their faces from there are at once both meticulous and perplexing invitations to reconsider how we negotiate borders—physically, ideologically, conceptually, ethically—and to question definitions and perceptions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Bucak’s new works, in particular, are prompts to reflect on shared experiences of political violence, oppression, and suppression throughout the world. “
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SMFA Art Sale
When: November 17 – November 20
Where: School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 230 The Fenway, Boston
How: Official Website
What/Why:“SMFA’s celebrated annual sale has become a destination for art collectors and for those who simply love art.
With thousands of works on a changing rotation, priced by the artists and sold to benefit student scholarships, the SMFA Art Sale is your opportunity to discover the exceptional caliber of work produced by SMFA students, alumni, faculty, and affiliated artists, and to take home a masterpiece of your very own.”
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trans/draw
When: On view November 17-December 10, 2016
Opening Reception: November 19, 2016 7-9pm RSVP
Special Programming: December 3, 2016
Where: Gallery 263, 263 Pearl Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
How: Official Website
What/Why: “Join the Boston LGBTQIA Artist Alliance for a reception to celebrate our fall 2016 exhibition, TRANS/DRAW, an exhibiton conceived by BLAA artist Lenny Schnier, and juried by artist Cobi Moules.
About the show: BLAA’s eleventh show, TRANS/DRAW, is an opportunity to survey trans artists working in and around Boston on ways in which they incorporate drawing into their practice and their experience as transgender.
Featuring: Eli Brown, Aria Carpenter, Ciaran Gaffney, Catherine Graffam, Dani Katz, Bunny Kellam-Scott, Chih Ching Ma, Jack Milligan, A.B. Miner, Mara Randolph-Merchant, Lenny Schnier, Cai Steele
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UH-OH: Frances Stark 1991–2015
When: On view through January 29, 2017
Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
How: Official Website
What/Why: “On view in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art from September 17, 2016, to January 29, 2017
The most comprehensive survey to date of Los Angeles-based artist and writer Frances Stark (born 1967), “UH-OH” tracks her 25-year career from early carbon copy drawings and text-based works to more recent video installations, digital slide shows, and projects that shape fleeting engagements with social media into art. Featuring more than 100 works, “UH-OH” provides an in-depth exploration of Stark’s singular artistic practice and voice, as she shares her knowledge of cultural topics high and low, including dissections of art history, the Internet, and her creative contemporaries.
Autobiography is Stark’s primary mode of expression. From self-examination—sustained meditation on what she’s reading, making, consuming, doing—come her reflections on literature, music, architecture, art, sex, domesticity, labor, pleasure, pedagogy, and class. Her works are layered with meanings and references that viewers can appreciate on many levels, from persistent visual motifs, to repetitive phrases and titles, to obscure citations, allusions, and puns. Rather than being a traditional chronological survey, “UH-OH” is designed to aid viewers in their own close reading of Stark’s work by highlighting recurrent jokes, rhymes, metaphors, and cultural references. With words and images at the heart of her practice, and moving between analog and digital modes of assemblage, Stark has been heralded by the Los Angeles Times as “the visual poet laureate of the Internet age.”
Highlights of the exhibition include Stark’s pre-YouTube Cat Videos (1999–2002); the playful, provocative and psychedelic “chorus girl” collages from the series A Torment of Follies (2008); My Best Thing (2011), a video that debuted at the 2011 Venice Biennale edited from Stark’s cyber exchanges with two online paramours; the celebrated video installation Bobby Jesus’s Alma Mater b/w Reading the Book of David and/or Paying Attention Is Free (2013), set to a West Coast gangsta rap soundtrack and featuring images that range from Renaissance paintings, to family snapshots, to portraits of hip hop legends. The exhibition’s title, “UH-OH,” contrasts the usual lengthy or pithy titles of Stark’s works with a simple response to a complicated problem. This familiar and percussive utterance demonstrates our instinctive awareness of a difficulty, and inspires us to look deeper, think harder, and listen more carefully.“
Also on view…
William Merritt Chase
When: On view through January 16, 2017
What/Why: “William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) was a brilliant observer, an innovative painter, and a leader in international art circles at the turn of the last century. Rediscover this important and overlooked master, praised for his artistic skill in both oil and pastel, as well as for the variety of his subjects: sympathetic images of women, jewel-like landscapes, views of urban parks, and scenes of children at play. The first complete examination of the artist in more than three decades, “William Merritt Chase” brings together 80 of the painter’s finest works in both oil and pastel, drawn from public and private collections across the US. This major international traveling exhibition, co-organized by The Phillips Collection (Washington, DC), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia (Venice), and the Terra Foundation for American Art, sheds new light on the work of one of our country’s leading American Impressionists.”
Also also on view..
Make Way for Ducklings: The Art of Robert McCloskey
When: On view November 25, 2016 – June 18, 2017
How: Official Website
What/Why:“In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the beloved children’s book set in Boston, Make Way for Ducklings (1941), this exhibition tracks the career of the book’s author and illustrator Robert McCloskey (1914–2003). The recipient of two Caldecott Medals and three Caldecott Honors, McCloskey was a major force in 20th-century picture book art, and “Make Way for Ducklings: The Art of Robert McCloskey” provides an opportunity for visitors of all ages to enter the author’s delightful world.
With art from Make Way for Ducklings at its center, the retrospective presents more than 50 works, including studies for other books written and illustrated by McCloskey: Lentil (1940), Homer Price (1943) and Centerburg Tales (1951), which recall his youth in rural Ohio, and popular Maine tales including Blueberries for Sal (1948) and Time of Wonder (1957). Works are drawn primarily from the rich, but rarely exhibited holdings of the May Massee Collection at Emporia State University in Kansas.
An exhibition highlight is the miniature bronze model for Nancy Schön’s Make Way for Ducklings sculpture, commissioned for the Boston Public Garden in 1985. As well as celebrating McCloskey’s achievements as author-illustrator, the retrospective also includes a selection of his independent work connecting him to prominent American painters such as Thomas Hart Benton and Edward Hopper.
Don’t miss this opportunity to share the classic Make Way for Ducklings with a new generation and take a walk down Memory Lane, or at least the paths of the Boston Public Garden, to a simpler time, through the work of this dearly loved artist, author, and illustrator.”
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*****FERTILE SOLITUDE*****
WHEN: On view through December 18, 2016
WHERE: Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116
HOW: OFFICIAL WEBSITE
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Piper Brett, Caleb Cole, Emily Eveleth, Dana Filibert, Cig Harvey, Kyle Hittmeier, Annette Lemieux, Megan and Murray McMillan, Noritaka Minami, Hao Ni, Steven Pestana, Shelley Reed, Erin M. Riley and Sarah Wentworth
WHAT/WHY: “In the rush of everyday life, we occasionally need to hit pause (and reset), but even a moment’s peace can be hard to come by. This frenzy is often furthered by our mutually enabling relationship with technology and a self-inflicted state of constant connectivity. Unwilling to put down our phones to see a sunset, sharing our daily comings and goings with the ghosts in the machine, we self-sabotage our peaceful pursuits and further separate ourselves from ourselves.
Fertile Solitude hopes to offer a reprieve from the madding crowd, an oasis that coaxes us to look inward and take steps towards overcoming our widespread aversion to introspection.
Within the physical framework of a maze, exhibition visitors are left to go their own ways. Their journeys will take them through the works of 15 artists whose histories and visual languages tell their own stories. The exhibition has no singular origin. Rather, its narrative is a compilation of external observations of human behavior, the curator’s ongoing personal quest to achieve homeostasis, the notebooks of French philosopher Albert Camus, the musings of British psychoanalytical writer Adam Phillips, and even a recent study finding that, to an overwhelming degree, people would rather shock themselves with an electrical current than sit in quiet contemplation for even 15 minutes.
With an emphasis on the individual, Fertile Solitude presents art in an unexpected environment that encourages wanderlust, rewards curiosity and contemplates the restorative properties of simply being alone with your own thoughts.”
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Notes from the desk of FLUX.:
-I’m combining the last 2 weeks of this month because I can. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-I will be adding more events in coming days, so be sure to check back.
-I’ll need another minute or two on all that writing I promised for November. Election n’all.
–Fertile Solitude was featured in the Globe this week, thanks Cate!
-Are there any arts markets / holiday markets I should know about for December? If there is a critical mass, I’ll make a separate post highlighting them. So, tweet me things.
à tout à l’heure, mes chères ♥
