MAKE-SHIFT

Curated by Keisha Prioleau-Martin

September 14 - October 26, 2020

Yura Adams, Grace Joshua Byron, Amarise Carreras, Jillian Dolan, Eliza Doyle, Catherine Haggarty, Raymond Hwang, Niki Kreise, Whitney Lorenze, Gabriella Moreno, Anne McRay, Kelsey Renko, and Lars Van Dooren

Rigor and imagination. Break. Intermezzo. Conceptual risk. Waiting. Negative Space. Exaggerations. Perception of pattern. Bend the line. Work through scraps. Schisms. Individual as part. Quasi-productivity. Muscle memory. Shared vulnerability. MAKE-SHIFT .

An ominous fall overshadows blithe moments of summer. The country is on fire, both figuratively and literally; a synonymous reality that has caught on with the masses lately. Boy did Steven King miss out. We are in a critical moment of learning and unlearning the lexicons of this so-called ‘American way.’

Make-Shift consists of 13 artists - all of whom responded to an open-call in late March. Art reflects life, which reflects art, which distorts and enrichs viewers. Each work simultaneously examines and dysmistifes its own construct through idiosyncratic efforts: figures and shapes are recycled and reworked, internal and outdoor spaces mingle, blend. Light surfaces internally, with no explicit source. Material of predetermined destinies are repurposed.These small, self-fulfilling, manifestations add up to something larger than life. The work is aware of its own gestural and constructed objecthood. A double consciousness surfaces with the aid of viewership.

These works offer a fundamental rethinking of art, not as a finished line, but as a liminal space to relinquish completeness and objecthood; a tandem that lives on - the work, much like the artists, are always subject to reformations and growth. These happenings are not mutually exclusive. The nonexistent underpinning of permanence grounds MAKE-SHIFT.