Uncrumpling This Much Crumpled Thing
@ The Exhibition Agency
2351 N Milwaukee Ave, 2, Chicago, IL 60647
Opening Saturday, August 28th, from 7PM - 10PM
On view through Saturday, September 25th
Work by Gina Beavers (NYC), Chris Bradley (Chicago), Andrew Guenther (NYC), Anna Krachey (Austin), Elisa Lendvay (NYC), Tim Louis Graham (Chicago) and Eliza Myrie (Chicago).
I.
Even twins are never exact copies of each other and yet, there lingers the common complaint that things seem the same everywhere. Films repeat the same threadbare storylines, grand political gestures are merely gestures of old with predictable outcomes, and the idea of the new (that which does not resemble anything else) becomes a difficult fiction.
II.
The artists in this exhibition utilize the fiction of resemblance. Their artworks are deceitful—quite simply, they look like other things. However, these artworks play with the subtle variations between things, the strangeness, intimacy, and even peculiarity common to the world of objects. The idea of disresemblance pervades the work, and as such, negotiates a balance between representation as an impossible act and the specific traces and thick materiality embedded within these works.
III.
Art consists of the transformation between the visible and the invisible relations between things. To make something strange throws a wrench into the habits of looking. Although looking can be one of the easiest things to do in the world—to gaze aimlessly, such as when window shopping—it can also be one of the most rigorous ways of experiencing the world. When using eyes to stare, they can pierce past the thin skin that covers all things.
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