535 West 22nd St. 6th floor
Default State Network
June 17 – August 13
curated by Ryan wallace
Artists: Glen Baldridge, Jaq Chartier, N. Dash, Alex Dodge, Chris Duncan, Elise Ferguson, Joseph Hart, Keegan McHargue, Hilary Pecis, Andrew Schoultz, Ryan Wallace & Will Yackulic
I have always been a big fan of Patrick Grimm. He is a professor at Stonybrook who specializes in the philosophy of computer modeling in game theory, epistemology, and philosophy of language; philosophical logic (particularly non-classical logics), ethics, and philosophy of religion. Throughout his broad and distinguished career he has built a reputation as an authority of the brain and consciousness and many of the other concerns that curator / artist Ryan Wallace poses to the group of artists he has included in his new group exhibition Default State Network at Morgan Lehman. While Prof. Grimm has nothing to do with this show I think he would be pleased to see that some of the ideas that have guided his fascination have become mainstream topics of inquiry within the contemporary art market.
Lets let the curator of the show Mr. Wallace tell us a little about what he’s up to here:
"The default state network", is a network of regions in the brain active when an individual is not focused on the outside world but rather in a wakeful-resting state such as daydreaming, speculating, or contemplating the past. It has been hypothesized that these regions play an essential role in creative thought…
…Combinations of craft, theory, humor, history and inventiveness are all used to effective ends. One would think that such criteria would be sufficient but it is not from the result of chemical properties or arrangements of pigment, manipulation of space, or dexterity of intellect alone that truly move us. The tone is more mysterious. Something is more ethereal. This something, as Chalmers describes, is so difficult to reconcile.
Both Chalmers and Mr. Wallace are dancing around transcendence. For artists the idea of creating objects or images that are more than the sum of their parts is the difference between meaningful work and craft. But like consciousness, understanding what makes this happen seems to be just slightly out of our current reach of understanding. Like much of modern science and modern art we can depend on the miraculous results of our repeatable experiments but at a fundamental level don’t fully understand how the experiment really works. The best we can do is to theorize for now and continue to experiment. And this show is full of experiments. Of the twelve artists in the show I thought three of them really stood out-
Glen Baldridge
Alex Dodge
Jaq Chartier
Visit www.morganlehmangallery.com for more information and the whole curatorial essay by Mr. Wallace. The gallery has images of all the work up on the home page of their website if your to damn lazy go go out in the gorgeous NYC summertime and see the show in person.
Refeshments:
Sea Ridge Chardonnay, California 2008 - Unripened Chardonnay with hints of tropical fruit, citrus, soap, disinfectant and butterscotch. The manufacturer of this sub par swill insists that special care is taken to maximize the “varietal” nuances at their vineyards. Whatever that means is beyond me. Its almost as if you can taste the disinfectant they used to sterilize the bottles before they were filled. Crappy label too but I drank two flimsy plastic ups of the stuff and didn’t get sick so it’s a D- for you Sea Ridge. In a proper glass I might be more forgiving and under the right circumstance this wine could really soar out of D territory and hold down a solid C-
No comments:
Post a Comment