There are two exciting exhibitions to check out in the month of January. All the information is below. I hope the holiday season has treated you well and I wish you all the best in the new year. Forget Me Nots Land is growing everyday so check back for updates.
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A World on Fire is an exhibition that features a partial chapter of Cleaves’s self-written narrative titled Forget Me Nots Land. In this chapter ideas of community, immigration, and rituals that are associated with celebration are explored through abstract figurative painting. This exhibition documents an imagined biannual festival that commences when a weather event changes the colors of the outdoor landscape to hues of orange and golden yellows. The celebration location alternates between the four most prominent tribes and this year it is hosted by the Black Fins.
In preparation for this event new residential prospects from other realms of existence are summoned to take part in the festivities and many travel arduous distances to arrive. Towards the end of the celebration a final party is held- complete with live music, dancing, and fellowship. The next day the natural colors of the world are set to return to the landscape, but, on this occasion; the world is left mostly muted in tones of grey. The citizens of Forget Me Not Land think fondly of the good times and the main protagonist Bookie sets out in hopes of restoring color back into the world.
Rooted in improvisational theater, “Yes, And” is a phrase that embodies an ethos of acceptance and addition. The concept resonates with many contemporary visual artists who emphasize intuition, improvisation, and process. Drawing on this approach, Yes &... brings together an eclectic mix of styles and aesthetics from 18 artists united by their human-centered focus and perspective.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly ubiquitous, this exhibition turns our attention to qualities that underscore the inherently human character of art—the wavering line, thick brushstroke, hand-squished clay, rough-hewn wood—and the deliberate choices that reveal the artist’s process when pairing found objects, cultural content, new technology, or formal elements. Artists act as filtration systems by processing the external world through their senses, digesting and integrating its nutrients, and then reshaping it into outputs that bear their unique fingerprints. The results of this process are poetic imperfections that become traces of individuality or glitches of human nature.
Each artist in Yes &... exhibits two works, and the pairings highlight both continuity in style and departures from aesthetic formulas. This exhibition is also accompanied by a zine that explores other facets of the artists’ lives beyond their art practices. Together, the exhibition and zine examine the layered role that context plays when appreciating or understanding a work of art.
Guest curated by Tobias Fike & Donald Fodness