Organizers

Lia Rousset and Hannah Swartz

Contributing Artists

Chris Bradley, Uisuk Byeon, Jean Kang, David Lakein, Shirin Mozaffari, Shannon Schmidt, Jiwon Yoon

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

SUGs LG Space invites you to stop by weekly to experience the exhibition series, ‘”[Variations] in Dialogue”. Seven artists will present their work in a series of installations and performances that capitalize on the dialogue between audience and experience. The exhibition investigates how contemporary art forms can both command and respond to the space they are presented in, as well as how exhibition design canfacilitate the viewer;s experience and perception of the art shown. // David Lakein (March 9 – April 4) – Can dialogue be considered a creative act? Does dialogue demand inclusive collaboration? When does dialogue become a vehicle for community? Audience stakeholders are invited to participate in a diverse event series – a debate, lecture-deomstration, performance, and workshops – that explore variations in dialogue through insitgating confusion, embracing discomfort, and confronting engagement. A common thread throughout will be the proposition that dialogue can be perceived as research and embodied as a practice. These events will aim to create energetic containers and pwerful conduits for individual discovery and communal empowerment. // Jiwon Yoon (March 9 – March 12) – Untitled (2008) and Untitled (2008) – “What confronts me every morning is my desire to define the edge of the wall,” says Yoon. Her naturally bad eyesight is a daily reality, which challenges her to refine vaugeness into more focuses and distinguished forms. It is these illusions that she recreates in her art practice, creating shapes that come in and out of view, encouraging the viewer to focus on different planes and consequently alter both depth and perception. Yoon’s work is very precise and deliberate. The canvas size, colors, texture, placement, and justapositions of works are all thoughtfully considered, selected to communicate a tension between the painting, the wall, and the viewer. When the canvases are placed across the room from one another, te space between becomes activated. The push and pull of the eyes in each painting aeem to talk to one another and the panoptical stare may render an observer self-conscience or, on occasion, even momentarily immobilized. // Shannon Schmidt (March 9 – March 12) – :what’s done cannot be undone. (2009) – In this site-specific installation, Schmidt expresses her interest in the flexibility of language and meaning when words collide with objects and space. :what’s done cannot be undone. grew out of a response to thegallery space, a dialogue with collaborating artists, and a combined interest in the wall as a mataphor, location and departure point. The text used is a hybrid of Schidt’s poetry and an appropriation from a scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which Lady Macbeth is speaking to the doctor about her current condition. It is at this point in the play when Lady M. realizes that the stain or spot of blood (evidence of the murderous plot) cannot simply be washed clean. Schmidt uses sections of Shakespeare’s text and the words of Macbeth to divorce language from its original referent in order to question the role of the speaker, who is speaking, an the constrution of history influenced by mythology. // Shirin Mozaffari (March 24 – March 27) – I Inherit My Grandmother’s Fear (2008) – Mozaffari is fascinated by the notion that parents inject fear in order to validate their own anxieties, or to create a companion who will share their concerns. By revealing family secrets, Mozaffari attempts to dismantle the romantic connotations that are socially attached to notions of family and motherhood specifically. The idealistic image of the sacrificing mother or the sacred bond between mother and child create an unrealistic representation of life that is far from what people actually experience. I Inherit My Grandmother’s Fear is a series of animation in which Mozaffari explore the inheritance of fear through generations. Inspired by nightmares as a manifestation of fear, these animations layer photography, collage and painting to recreate the intesity and urgency of these visions. // Chris Bradley (March 17 – March 20) – Equi- (2009) – As a maker, Bradley is concered with process, material relationships, and objects dis/functionality. In Equi-, he is exploring the dialogue between natural and artificial materials, as well as the use of form to capture potential energy. Bradley employs a tension between materials and objects, in which he explores power, balance, and equilibrium. In this installation the audience becomes an additional material source, their physically engagement with the work becomes important to both its essence and to the viewer’s experience. Equi- aims to provide a pause, a moment of reflection, from ensuing busyness, and to encourage contemplation as to what the near future holds.