I am excited to announce an upcoming group show and curatorial project of mine: INSTRUMENTS OF MAGIC, which will be on view from March 5 - 10. Please join us for the reception on March 8 at 4pm in the Fox 2 Gallery on the MICA campus.
About the show:
INSTRUMENTS OF MAGIC
FOX 2 GALLERY
Curated by Kirsten Kelly
March 4 - March 11
“Art in prehistoric times was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic.”
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, 1935.
This exhibition surveys a selection of artworks by three artists: Tyler Brunner, Sarah Bodley, and Kirsten Kelly. Created during a period of three years in which the artists were living and working together, the pieces gathered in this exhibition catalogue the genesis and development of a shared visual language.
The artists share a preoccupation with the artwork as artifact, as monument, as mythos, each striving to recuperate what Walter Benjamin described as the prehistoric function of the artwork—as "an instrument of magic." By blurring the lines between fact and fiction, the works in the exhibition become interfaces for accessing a realm of magical realism; they are artifacts and monuments lonely for a history in which fable and fact have not yet been torn apart. The resulting collection of works exists as a set of monuments to the splendor of antiquity reimagined under a modern creative lens.
The exhibition is organized to highlights points of intersection between the artists: placing alike symbol next to alike symbol in order to reveal the chronological progression of their shared visual language. By hybridizing modern digital methods of fabrication with natural materials and traditional craft processes of stained glass, oil painting, and quilt making, the works invite viewers to assume the role of art historian and archaeologist alike.