The status of the image in art has invariably been a subject of debate in art criticism, and ever more in recent years. In turn, the image has been fully subsumed into the circulation of production and consumption. Images have become ubiquitous and permeate a daily life wherein propaganda, ideology, advertising, entertainment, and spectacle commingle and implicate each other.
As Contemporary Art in all of its manifestations is saturated with the circulation of images, the question of "What is next, if anything?" and "What strategies might be employed to create the image that is not so implicated?" and "What are the limits, if any, to an artist's genre of artmaking?" have increased in salience. In response, the twenty one artists on view challenge how their image-making might oppose traditional perception and where, in fact, it might insist on it?
Patterns emerged organically—shadows, distortions, color play, and a tangible mark-making link these disparate works and artists. The visceral desire to push against expected boundaries of visual representation allows these works to appear simultaneously wondrous and meticulously calculated. On view in the gallery space, they present as a unified force eager to call upon symbols and references and turn them on their heads.
In this third iteration of our annual group exhibition, these 21 artists, with the careful curation of Luiza Lukova, respond to these states of affairs with all their social, political, and aesthetic implications. Foregrounding after / time’s research-forward focus, each of these artists bring to the fore their insights into the image. By turns whimsical, tragic, industrial, poésie concrète, and definitionally-defying, these works of art make us wonder why image provokes beyond itself, why a limitation for one person is an alternate universe for someone else, or to what extent image is inherently open-ended, even with the weight of its history as window, frame, mirror, concept, idea, and representation. Image as the possible and the no-place of utopia. It’s all there, and more."
