| Curatorial Statement |
For decades, artists have been making temporary works of art. This exhibition celebrates the concept of temporary works by giving five area artists the opportunity to create work that is temporary in nature without concern for preserving a final product. As part of this year’s Unfiltered Fringe series, InLiquid presents Infiltration, a group exhibition exploring the "temporary" in contemporary art. Both Annette Cords’ and Calla Thompson’s wall works were created specifically for the exhibition and will exist for the duration of the exhibition only. In Calla Thompson’s Puff, her life-size monoprints were computer generated off site and composed on the gallery walls. The final product, which presents an open narrative, was mounted to the wall using wallpaper paste. To the artist, this semi-permanent process is an essential visual component in mounting the work, but will ultimately destroy the prints in the de-installation process. Similarly, Blindman’s Bluff by Annette Cords was created on site using many of the same materials the artist usually applies in her paintings. For Cords, this project was an opportunity to step away from the formal confines of the canvas edge and use the gallery wall as her ground. Like Thompson’s wall work, Cords’ piece too will be dismantled at the end of the exhibit and much of the work painted over. In Jeannie Yip’s installation, the gallery space also plays a significant role in her piece. The gallery acts as the location for both the filming and exhibition of her video installation. Utilizing a video camera and sewing machine the artist filmed herself for three days as she sewed herself out of the room sized dress, creating small envelopes from the discarded dress material. The edited video documenting the process has been installed in the space along with the hand made envelopes. The video presents the viewer with only a limited view in to the artist’s process without inviting the audience to share in her entire experience. The remaining envelopes are left as a reminder of what was once there, a token of the experience for the viewer. The public is encouraged by the artist to take an envelope with them, a process that will eventually eliminate the exhibition. Elimination plays a large part in Kevin Reay’s works on paper. In the works nothing, nowhere, and vacant Reay seeks to explore the relationship between the temporal and the physical, the permanent and the temporary, and the real and the imagined. Closely related to Reay’s previous work, these pieces examine subjectivity and questions the very existence or even importance of art beyond concept and theory. In Mathew Suib’s installation, audience participation plays a significant role in the temporary projection in Space In, Space Out. Comprised of a chair, a turntable with built in speakers, a record by the artist and a light, the installation is more than the sum of its parts. Suib relies on the viewer to activate these otherwise static objects by placing the needle to the record. The action in turn begins the audio component of the piece while simultaneously triggering a small but galactic image to project on to the wall. |
As
part of this year's Unfiltered Fringe series, InLiquid presents Infiltration,
an exhibition exploring temporal works of art. In keeping with the Fringe
Festival’s history of bringing fleeting and experimental projects
to the public, the intention of Infiltration is to explore the work of
area artists whose processes and concepts take priority over their need
to preserve a tangible or final product. The exhibition is comprised of
site-dependent works, which will be gradually eliminated through the duration
of the exhibition, dismantled or destroyed by the de-installation process.
In some cases, the work may not be present at all. Or is it?
Annette Cords
Blindman’s Bluff
wall drawing
Blindman’s Bluff involves a number of materials and applications. Lines of snapped string are overlaid with circles of semitransparent corrugated plastic. More circles dot the plastic ones, while the internal lines of the corrugated plastic and further lines printed on top move off in different directions. Ephemeral and playful in its nature, the piece uses linearity and movement to examine issues regarding abstraction and physicality, scale and intimacy, perception and sensation. As a wall drawing the piece is not bound to a particular frame. Instead it is continuous and fluid and the various lines function as threads of thought, dropped here and picked up again there. The circles are positioned in intervals, almost like musical notes alluding to movement in space and time. They also add a playful component to the piece bringing to mind children’s games. The title of the wall drawing refers to the visual movement and play of the piece. On another level it also applies to the work’s abstract and visceral nature and so focuses on the connections between perception and physical sensation. Using a predetermined system to create the piece, the drawing itself explores how systems can be used to materialize physical and sensory experiences in a visual, two-dimensional realm.
About the Artist
Annette
Cords was born in Hamburg, Germany, and grew up both in Germany and
the United States. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, in 1993, she has lived and worked in New York City. Her
art has been widely exhibited in galleries and alternative spaces in America
and Europe. Cords is a 2003 recipient of an New York Foundation for the
Arts artist fellowship in the category of Printmaking/Drawing/Artists
Books.
See Annette Cords’ InLiquid artist page
KEVIN REAY
nothing, nowhere, and vacant
"He did not want to compose another Quixote--which
is easy--but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated
a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy
it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide--word
for word and line for line--with those of Miguel Cervantes."
-Jorge Luis Borges, from Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
In the works nothing, nowhere and vacant (all 2003)
Kevin Reay seeks to explore the relationship between the temporal and
the physical, the permanent and the temporary and the real and the imagined.
In fact, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that Reay's interest
is located in the space between the aforementioned states and not these
states in and of themselves. In the experience of looking at art, the
question of where the 'art' is, is not one that usually impresses itself
upon the viewer – the physical location of something is generally
implicit in the act of looking. However, the question becomes a pertinent
one in the examination of the relationship between 'the object' and the
experience of 'looking at the object'. In the struggle to communicate
something ineffable, the artist makes available to the viewer the result
of observation and thought which manifests itself as the 'art object'.
It is possible for the art object to take many forms and, in fact, it
doesn't have to be an actual object at all. The art object promotes a
reaction in the viewer, which is then translated into the prized 'art
experience.' The question is again, where is the art? The inert art object
only undergoes the transmutation into the art experience when it is viewed,
and therefore one may wonder if it exists at all when it is not being
viewed. Therefore, perhaps it is true to state that art only comes into
being in the cognitive facility of the viewer, and otherwise occupies
the space between existence and non-existence and simultaneously has the
potential to be everything and nothing.
-Dr. Seymour Potter, 2003
About the Artist
Kevin Reay (b. 1971 in England U.K.) lives and works in Philadelphia.
He studied painting at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland and participated
in an exchange program with Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.
His curatorial experience includes Pogo, a project space for cutting-edge installation art in Philadelphia (2001), NewHormones a group show of work by students from Tyler School of Art (2002), and as a juror for 2003-2004 season of Nexus Community Gallery. Reay was a panelist in 'InLiquid Investigates: Artists Outside the Box,' a roundtable discussion comprising of artist/curators, and lectured on Matthew Barney as part of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 'Art at Lunch' series (2003). Writing credits include "The Good Apprentice," an in-depth study of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 3 (PAFA Graduate Journal, 2002).
Recent exhibitions include Phoney Baloney (Pogo, 2001); Magazine (In:View, 2002); Don’t Come Running to Me (Project Room, 2002); and Army of One and Angel of Death (Nexus Community Gallery, May - June 2003).
MATTHEW SUIB
Space In / Space Out
Artist’s Statement
Strategies and attempts to communicate with extra terrestrial life have
been documented at least as early as 1820, while radio telescopes on earth
have been receiving and transmitting interstellar signals since 1960.
Human curiosity and desire eschews both empirical data and the indifference
of the universe. Whether or not extra terrestrial life actually exists,
we have a difficult time imagining that Earth is the sole home to intelligent
life in the universe.
Our attempts to bridge the communication gap across interstellar space point not just to our fundamental need to communicate, but to our ultimate isolation both physically and metaphorically. Assuming our messages do reach other intelligent life-forms, one cannot disregard the huge potential for miscommunication or complete non-recognition. Even as you complete your next cell phone call, your message continues to travel in wave form through space, possibly prompting an alien being millions of light-years away to "pick up a pizza on the way home."
Space In / Space Out was conceived as a model or illustration of interstellar radio experiments. A vinyl record plays the audible sounds of radio signals received from outer space, mixed with Earth sounds that humans have in turn transmitted abroad—an approximation of the sum of radio activity in the universe. A small light illuminating the spinning record casts a moving elliptical reflection in an otherwise darkened space, creating a simulated "galaxy." The turntable acts as the metaphorical radio telescope, transmitting and receiving audio signals to and from this spinning galaxy while alluding to our own isolation as individuals, and the indifference of nature to our attempts at transcending human boundaries.
About the Artist
Matthew Suib is a Philadelphia-based media artist. His work with photography,
sound and video has been exhibited nationally and internationally at such
venues as PS1 Contemporary Art Center (NYC), The Contemporary Museum (Baltimore),
The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), The Philadelphia Museum
of Art, and Sara Meltzer Gallery (NYC).
CALLA THOMPSON
Puff
Artist’s Statement
In my work I examine small actions that beget small amounts of power,
scrutinizing gains and losses. Always unresolved, my semi-narrative scenes
suggest both the physical and psychological struggles of my characters.
Conflicts are fixed mid-posture, leaving the viewer to decide if something
has just occurred or is about to occur. The visual language and wry humor
in my work is at once comforting and familiar, dislocating and suggestive.
In Puff, three masked characters stand holding their sides. The masks of the two nearest the microphone are joined, leaving them unable to speak aloud. The third masked character, without the use of the microphone, converses with a deer that uses a bugle to mediate its voice.
About the Artist
Calla Thompson is a practicing artist and a faculty member at the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She received her MFA in Photography
from Syracuse University in 1999 and her BFA in Photography from the University
of Ottawa (Canada) in 1996.
Thompson's work is shown throughout the United States, Canada, and South America, including solo exhibitions at Soho 20 Gallery (New York), Open Studio Gallery (Toronto), and School 33 (Baltimore). Her group exhibitions include those at the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), the Korean Cultural Center Gallery of Los Angeles, Centro Colombo Americano de Medellin in associate with EAFIT University (Medellin, Columbia), Joan Grona Gallery (Texas), Arlington Arts Center (Virginia), and Maryland Art Place (Baltimore).
JEANNIE YIP
art & lies
art & lies is a temporal site-specific installation produced for InLiquid’s Infiltration at the Painted Bride. A large dress of white cotton muslin was fashioned to fit the dimensions of the second floor exhibition space, only to be slowly deconstructed in a documented performance-based ritual of cutting small panels from the dress, writing either "art" or "lie" in white dressmaker's chalk on each piece, then sewing each panel into a closed envelope and placing it back on the floor from whence it was originally cut. In freeing myself, a place of rest was created for the sea of envelopes, placed in the same formation as they were made, serving to locate both private/body and public space. The monitor and VCR playing the performance video are placed on the table as a surrogate of the sewing machine.
About the Artist
Jeannie Yip’s multi-media sculptural works are tied together by
the common language of dissecting and deconstructing, returning to an
attempt to revive, resurrect, and reassemble. Through her constructed
visual narratives, she probes the constantly shifting lines between memory
and identity, fiction and truth. Other recent exhibitions include s(how)
at the ICA, Philadelphia (2003), InLiquid’s InView (2002), and Video
Sho at Ego Park in Oakland, CA (2002). Yip holds a BFA in sculpture from
the Rhode Island School of Design.
See Jeannie Yip’s InLiquid artist page