No matter how well we manage our time, there never seems
enough of it to do everything we want. In a time of PDAs, just-in-time inventorying and data traveling literally at the speed of light, we may wonder if we have lost complete control over the natural rhythms of our lives. When desires for convenience erode our capacity to savor and enjoy, our quality of life has deteriorated. Slow Revolution will present artists whose work decelerates time or privileges idleness. The exhibition, curated by Rotunda Gallery Associate Director Patrick Grenier, will explore how artists depict the passing of time including how duration suggests meaning.
Arists include:
Jill Auckenthaler translates her PDA schedule into her own visual vocabulary, categorizing appointments according to color, line and shape. The two watercolors shown represent this unique time management technique. Also included is an atonal audio composition inspired by the same material.
Douglas Boatwright's video Drool is an exercise in endurance. The frame captures a close-up of the artist's mouth, held frozen in a labored smile as a pool of drool forms behind his bottom lip, which eventually cascades over it.
Matthew Buckingham's Image of Absalon to Be Projected Until it Vanishes changes over the duration of the exhibition. The 35mm slide, an image of a public monument to the Danish warrior and statesman, will slowly be burned out by the projector's bulb, defying the monument's attempt to fix historical narrative.
Beth Campbell's drawings, part of an ongoing series of psychological landscapes, chart internalized thoughts, creating a powerful spiral of time and memory.
Janice Caswell has created a site-specific installation that translates her experience of places into a formal visual vocabulary. The resulting mental map is a dynamic representation of our flawed attempts to organize memory, capture experience and secure the past.
Moyra Davey furthers her interest in the intersection of creative life and the everyday with photographs from her book The Problem of Reading. In one photograph, a fine layer of dust collects behind a shelf of books, creating an intimate metaphor for the passage of time.
Peter Eudenbach's video projection Table is projected onto the Gallery's movable wall. In it, a plain wooden table is tossed about by ocean waves, drifting out to sea and then making its way back to shore.
Chris Gentile's photographs capture the moment of possibility that exists in the threshold between clarity and crisis. In Thinking about Not Thinking, a brain rests atop wooden legs as if it were necessary for the organ to be removed to stop it from processing data; in another work, a parking lot spells out the word help as if reflecting its users' frustration with the over-rationalization of consumerism.
In her video Out on a Limb, Vlatka Horvat balances on one leg on a tree stump. The video runs for several minutes, then reverses itself in an endless cycle of endurance. The artist's dismembered leg struggles to form a human surrogate for the missing tree, creating a meditation on ecology and the passage of time.
Nancy Hwang's interactive work Meet Me at Home consists of a pedestal with a single red telephone. Viewers are invited to pick up the phone and speak directly to the artist. Willing participants are then invited to meet Hwang at her home or their own for unscripted conversation.
Emily Jacir's video A Sketch in the Egyptian Museum, April 24, 2003, Cairo, recently shown at the Venice Biennial, documents a range of interactions with an ancient architectural artifact from maintenance staff to museum goers.
Kristin Lucas created 5 Minute Break during an artist residency in the World Trade Center. During her residency, Lucas was given a tour of the north tower's basement by Robert Lynch, a port authority property manager. Inspired by this tour, Lucas created a video piece in which an animated office worker wanders this subterranean labyrinth of dead-ends, empty corridors and massive maintenance equipment, eerily frozen in time.
In her nature studies, Felicia Megginson employs a double exposure technique to reveal herself within the work. As the image of the photographer both inserts itself into the frame and recedes, slightly out of focus, we experience the vulnerability of the human animal in the natural world.
Bryony Romer's installation on the Gallery's front window entitled What Happened Here? invites visitors to record their personal connection to the site with white china marker on the glass. The installation image also references the history of our space as a former Indian trail to the East River.
vydavy sindikat, a Brooklyn-based group experiment, explores the spontaneous formation of community in their ongoing project Public Gathering. Each gathering is documented in a series of group photographs, preserving the intimacy of an ephemeral community.
Miho Suzuki rebels against propriety, timetables and the establishment as she playfully hula hoops in various public spaces including the middle of Grand Central Station.
German artist Olav Westphalen's The Weight of Dead Prey is a reclining Fiberglas tiger that plays with a toy, resembling a modern sculpture, given to zoo animals. The toy is a literal approximation of "the weight of dead prey," a surrogate that functions, but is a sad reminder of the animal's captivity for entertainment purposes.
Monika Wuhrer's Visceral Circle is a witty look at the mechanics of motherhood in modern culture. As her son nurses one breast, a breast pump works the other. The work becomes a meditation on surrendering one's body both to motherhood and a machine.
