SPACELIFT
January 14 - February 5, 2011
Curated by Kristin Bly
Opening Reception
Friday, January 14 6:00p-11:00p
Additional Hours
Saturday, January 15 12:00p-5:00p
Sunday, January 16 12:00p-4:00p
And by appointment through February 5.
Ever notice how some memories, like fine wines, get better with time—how some narratives, when relived, are revived? It’s like a memory upgrade, it’s new and improved. It’s been cleaned-up, like a wish come true.
We exercise these emotional improvements in a variety of contexts—it’s with the people that come in and out of our lives, it’s our experience with places and things, sometimes it’s related to a very specific fleeting event. And, really, it’s no surprise that we do all this. It’s rather natural. Just like the tenets of any self-respecting historical fiction, it’s practically an obligation to inject an existing tale with some umph!
Too, this peppering-up the past does not always correspond to something that began as an overly warm sensation. Sometimes, even as a coping mechanism, we give a memory a facelift to make it less ugly and more palatable for the present. “It wasn’t that bad,” we’ll say. Either way, tall-tale enhancements are tell-tale signs of our interest in recalling and recounting the past with a polished patina.
Spacelift is just that. It’s an exhibition addressing the notion that some memories get better with time—it’s the lifting up of the spaces in our minds. Spacelift artists approach their content and subject matter with certain levity, often (re)presenting things back, improved (upon) with dreamy optimism. They are navigators of remembrances, and their art is a scrapbook of the bygone, embellished with a boost of desire. Some works reference deeply personal stories, lending themselves to very specific autobiographies. Others lift-off more from popular culture, reminding us, in the spirit of Debord, how our impressions of the past (and the present) are inextricably shaped by the bombardment of mediated messages and the branded memories of “exactly” how things have come and gone.
Spacelift is a reconfiguring of reminiscences and a bolstering of the backlogged. It’s an exhibition that, as a whole, gives us a colorful overall story made-up of individually retold tales. It’s a compendium of past accounts, a veritable pulp fiction—all remastered and gussied-up to make for an even richer stream of narratives. Spacelift is pure hyperbole, and it doesn’t get any better than that—at least not until the next time the story is told…
~ Kristin Bly
Featuring the work of: Jane Baeslach, Beth Campbell, Amy Casey, Shelly DiCello, Craig Drennen, Elizabeth Emery, Brooke Inman, Aaron Koehn, Jessica Langley, Liz Maugans, Michelle Marie Murphy, Nathaniel Parsons, Todd Pavlisko, Barbara Polster, Bellamy Printz, Glenn Ratusnik, Eric Rippert, Douglas Max Utter.
January 14 - February 5, 2011
Curated by Kristin Bly
Opening Reception
Friday, January 14 6:00p-11:00p
Additional Hours
Saturday, January 15 12:00p-5:00p
Sunday, January 16 12:00p-4:00p
And by appointment through February 5.
Ever notice how some memories, like fine wines, get better with time—how some narratives, when relived, are revived? It’s like a memory upgrade, it’s new and improved. It’s been cleaned-up, like a wish come true.
We exercise these emotional improvements in a variety of contexts—it’s with the people that come in and out of our lives, it’s our experience with places and things, sometimes it’s related to a very specific fleeting event. And, really, it’s no surprise that we do all this. It’s rather natural. Just like the tenets of any self-respecting historical fiction, it’s practically an obligation to inject an existing tale with some umph!
Too, this peppering-up the past does not always correspond to something that began as an overly warm sensation. Sometimes, even as a coping mechanism, we give a memory a facelift to make it less ugly and more palatable for the present. “It wasn’t that bad,” we’ll say. Either way, tall-tale enhancements are tell-tale signs of our interest in recalling and recounting the past with a polished patina.
Spacelift is just that. It’s an exhibition addressing the notion that some memories get better with time—it’s the lifting up of the spaces in our minds. Spacelift artists approach their content and subject matter with certain levity, often (re)presenting things back, improved (upon) with dreamy optimism. They are navigators of remembrances, and their art is a scrapbook of the bygone, embellished with a boost of desire. Some works reference deeply personal stories, lending themselves to very specific autobiographies. Others lift-off more from popular culture, reminding us, in the spirit of Debord, how our impressions of the past (and the present) are inextricably shaped by the bombardment of mediated messages and the branded memories of “exactly” how things have come and gone.
Spacelift is a reconfiguring of reminiscences and a bolstering of the backlogged. It’s an exhibition that, as a whole, gives us a colorful overall story made-up of individually retold tales. It’s a compendium of past accounts, a veritable pulp fiction—all remastered and gussied-up to make for an even richer stream of narratives. Spacelift is pure hyperbole, and it doesn’t get any better than that—at least not until the next time the story is told…
~ Kristin Bly
Featuring the work of: Jane Baeslach, Beth Campbell, Amy Casey, Shelly DiCello, Craig Drennen, Elizabeth Emery, Brooke Inman, Aaron Koehn, Jessica Langley, Liz Maugans, Michelle Marie Murphy, Nathaniel Parsons, Todd Pavlisko, Barbara Polster, Bellamy Printz, Glenn Ratusnik, Eric Rippert, Douglas Max Utter.
