RESPONSE I & II: Culture Laboratory Collective in collaboration with Ben Lewis and Noah Simblist
January 26- February 21, 2012
Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock University
Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Exhibition format:An outside party (Ben Lewis for Response I and Noah Simblist for Response II) proposes a theme in the form of a 12 word sentence and a word is designated for each artist in Culture Lab. The gallery will be set up to read in a linear format following the sentence structure. Each artist will be given approx. 4 feet of horizontal space in which to ‘consider’ their word.
“Nowadays we must distinguish between the deeply superficial and the superficially superficial.“
~Ben Lewis (of ‘Art Safari,‘ London)
In this exhibit we have been provided with a sentence by outside party Ben Lewis, an award winning director, writer, and interviewer based in London. In his acclaimed contemporary art series, ‘Art Safari,’ Lewis has interviewed internationally recognized artists Matthew Barney, Sophie Calle, Santiago Sierra, and Maurizio Cattelan. He has recently released a new documentary titled “The Great Contemporary Art Bubble.”
“I am writing this (self reflexive) sentence but it is writing you.”
~Noah Simblist (artist/critic./curator)
Noah Simblist is an artist, writer, curator, and associate professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. His work explores the relationship between politics and abstraction with an emphasis on the Palestine/Israeli conflict. Simblist has written for Artpapers, Artlies and several web publications. He has curated Abstraction/Construction at SOIL gallery in Seattle, Collecting and Collectivity at Conduit Gallery in Dallas and the 3 Propositions and a Musical Scenario in Ft Worth along with Subtext Projects.
THEME: As a group Culture Lab will focus on themes of interpretation while highlighting ideas of diversity and individuality within a community.
Concept: The exhibit involves relational aesthetics, pinpointing the individuality of the artists and our localized attempts to remain a part of the group discussion. Each artist is naturally unique, so the idea is to promote an artist group that does not attempt to homogenize it’s member’s but allows them a voice that contributes to the vitality of the community.
Response I: Culture Laboratory Collective in collaboration with Ben Lewis and Response II: Culture Laboratory Collective in collaboration with Noah Simblist have been displayed at Richland College (Dallas), Box 13 ArtSpace (Houston) and recently at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). Both Response I and Response II exhibits will be on exhibit at Slippery Rock University, PA.
(Curated by Ryder Richards and Coordinated by Ian F. Thomas.)
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Previous RESPONSE exhibitions:
Culture Laboratory Collective 