table is pleased to present now, now, now!, a site-responsive exhibition by Chicago-based artist Joestine Con-ui.

Everyday things are now ordered online and expected to arrive in front of our doors in less than a week, some even within the same day. This consumer practice has become a standard in the US. That one click to confirm a transaction is one of many clicks in a network of instant material consumption that remembers and reminds.

This play between influencers and consumers, and products as stand-ins for our desires, is an on-going coalescence, keeping up and close to a fast and ever-changing image of lifestyle, and keeping far the true cost of the construct. Even scraping a hot deal on necessities for survival or financial ‘responsibility’ discounts further the accurate value of things. Perhaps it is just that item that you need that is now available on the World Wide Web. Still, how is price calculated, and is it worth it?

Our high speed and long distance affair with the market seems to contradict conduct regarding effective responses to climate change. We are urged to slow down, buy locally, walk, eat a plant-based diet, etcetera, but the grind of day to day with distractions of cyber-mirages clouds our long-term vision. To deal with the complex conditions of the now, recognition of interconnected and invisible forces that facilitate the flow of goods must first be seen and understood. When and how can a recalibration of varying speeds and scope of human activity take place? Can we re-imagine desire in a way that is sensitive to where we are and begin to see life in the present?

now, now, now! is a description on the moment. Comprised of four installations, the works converse with one another to comprehensively draw structures that make-up consumer culture in America. Common objects are the medium, situated to display their materiality and location, in synthesis with the project’s conceptual framework.

So come, carpe diem, YOLO.

Joestine Con-ui was born in Chicago but grew up in the Philippines during his childhood years and in Saipan during his adolescence before returning back to mainland America. He holds a BA in Sociology and Visual Arts from Oberlin College and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He is one of the founding members of Asia America Art Collective at Oberlin College and an inaugural participant of at land’s edge in Los Angeles. Con-ui’s work, collaborative performances, and public presentations has been included in events organized at the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Studio Art College International, and Marwen.

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table is a temporary artist-run project space organized by Kyle Bellucci Johanson in the city of Chicago. table hosts artists for solo shows with public receptions and private long-form discursive meals with invited guests of the artist’s choosing. These discursive meals cultivate primary content for texts in a critical publication documenting each artist’s project. table is an experiment in becoming; inhabiting thresholds between so-called discrete categories of subject and object, public and private, individual and collective; to situate practices and facilitate critical discourse, building community outside of either institution or market.

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Tags: Avondale, Chicago, Illinois, Joestine Con-ui, Joestine Con-ui: now now now!, Kyle Bellucci Johanson, now now now!, table