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Spill in-progress curatorial project |
"Spill" is an exhibition of artwork that either enacts or depicts spillage.
Our society can be viewed as liquid insofar as it prioritizes flexibility and change and has developed fluid understandings of once solid social forms. Likewise, in the arts, edges and limitations of skill, medium, and forms, have spilled over, and, in tandem, new limitations defined. Spills challenge wholeness and the edge between objects. Artists either lament the failure to control or revel in the messiness. The need to control, the inability to control, and the subsequent loss of control are subject for examination in this exhibition.
Artists may encourage or allow spillage by utilizing chance operations that lead to accidents. For example, the studio floor accumulates spillage and becomes a signal for the ephemera typically outside of the presented work. The viewer may perceive spillage as the artist's mistake; thereby, surmise that they have become privy to the artist's unintentional expression. The image of the cultivated performer breaks down, revealing the human imperfection within the artist's process. In a generation increasingly supportive of fluid understandings of identity, the spill becomes a metaphor of the urge to further dissolve identity. The spill becomes a radical expression of an imperfect, messy image of oneself in a society that cultivates perfection. While the viewer may understand themselves to be witnessing a vulnerable moment and un-covering of an artist’s veneer, the spill may also be an example of what Duchamp called “canned chance,” in other words, the fabrication of accidents. The spill plays upon the tension between accident and intention, authenticity and illusion.
Regardless of the deliberate or accidental nature of each spill, all the spills have a symbolic relationship to definitions of femininity. The spill enacts all things messy, dirty, grimy, gory, visceral, and sensual in human experience, possibly even extending into the realm of the grotesque and traumatic. These qualities are all inherently linked with historical definitions of femininity. The spill expresses a hunger to explore a vulnerable experience that moves toward hybridity.
Other than enacting a spill materially, an artist may also depict a spill visually. Spillage may be depicted and, through this translation from real to representation, the depicted drip merges chaos and control. A depicted drip may be entirely controlled in it’s creation and simultaneously still reference the accidental nature of an enacted drip.
Despite these differences, all of the work in the exhibition, nevertheless, spills. In times of the reinstitution of systems of control and increasing anxiety around psychological, economic, social, and political concerns, this exhibition reflects our inability to keep accidents from happening and our yearning for release. In this manner, spills embody dread and catharsis, evoking emotional responses ranging from slapstick humor to traumatic loss. In relation to each post-spilled world, the artists cope with the loss or revel in the freedom and the viewer is invited to celebrate or mourn. Are spills an apocalyptic collapse or glorious abandonment?
Our society can be viewed as liquid insofar as it prioritizes flexibility and change and has developed fluid understandings of once solid social forms. Likewise, in the arts, edges and limitations of skill, medium, and forms, have spilled over, and, in tandem, new limitations defined. Spills challenge wholeness and the edge between objects. Artists either lament the failure to control or revel in the messiness. The need to control, the inability to control, and the subsequent loss of control are subject for examination in this exhibition.
Artists may encourage or allow spillage by utilizing chance operations that lead to accidents. For example, the studio floor accumulates spillage and becomes a signal for the ephemera typically outside of the presented work. The viewer may perceive spillage as the artist's mistake; thereby, surmise that they have become privy to the artist's unintentional expression. The image of the cultivated performer breaks down, revealing the human imperfection within the artist's process. In a generation increasingly supportive of fluid understandings of identity, the spill becomes a metaphor of the urge to further dissolve identity. The spill becomes a radical expression of an imperfect, messy image of oneself in a society that cultivates perfection. While the viewer may understand themselves to be witnessing a vulnerable moment and un-covering of an artist’s veneer, the spill may also be an example of what Duchamp called “canned chance,” in other words, the fabrication of accidents. The spill plays upon the tension between accident and intention, authenticity and illusion.
Regardless of the deliberate or accidental nature of each spill, all the spills have a symbolic relationship to definitions of femininity. The spill enacts all things messy, dirty, grimy, gory, visceral, and sensual in human experience, possibly even extending into the realm of the grotesque and traumatic. These qualities are all inherently linked with historical definitions of femininity. The spill expresses a hunger to explore a vulnerable experience that moves toward hybridity.
Other than enacting a spill materially, an artist may also depict a spill visually. Spillage may be depicted and, through this translation from real to representation, the depicted drip merges chaos and control. A depicted drip may be entirely controlled in it’s creation and simultaneously still reference the accidental nature of an enacted drip.
Despite these differences, all of the work in the exhibition, nevertheless, spills. In times of the reinstitution of systems of control and increasing anxiety around psychological, economic, social, and political concerns, this exhibition reflects our inability to keep accidents from happening and our yearning for release. In this manner, spills embody dread and catharsis, evoking emotional responses ranging from slapstick humor to traumatic loss. In relation to each post-spilled world, the artists cope with the loss or revel in the freedom and the viewer is invited to celebrate or mourn. Are spills an apocalyptic collapse or glorious abandonment?