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| Brian Spolans, Long Moment, silkscreen; Taryn McMahon, Vision, monoprint; and Emmy Lingscheit, Remediators, linocut |
March 4-22, 2019
Voertman's Gallery
1314 W. Hickory St. Denton, TX
Reception: Friday March 8, 2019 at 5pm
Gallery Hours: Mon-Thurs 8-6, Friday 8-5, Saturday 10-5, Sunday 12-5
Radical Intimacy showcases the prints, drawings, and installations of Taryn McMahon, Emmy Lingscheit, and Brian Spolans. The artists share an interest in the interconnectedness of human and non-human systems, and creative research in print media, installation, and mixed media works on paper. This exhibition will generate connections between the artists’ bodies of work and will create a dialogue about how we see ourselves in relationship to our environment and to others. The title of the exhibition refers to all 3 artist’s interest in forming a radical intimacy between humans and their communities, whether that be social, biological, or environmental. Philosopher Timothy Morton has said, “The ecological view to come isn’t a picture of some bounded object or ‘restrictive economy,’ a closed system. It is a vast, sprawling mesh of interconnection without a definite center or edge. It is radical intimacy…McMahon uses images of plants and architecture from botanical gardens to investigate sites and histories, highlighting the complicated cultural construction of an idea of “nature”. Her artworksinterrogatewaysthatthesespacesprojectourowndesiresandfantasiesofthenatural world and our place within it. She blends digital and hand drawn print processes to further explore how our interactions with the natural world are mediated through technology, and are thus fragmented and selective. Through her work, she imagines a future ecology in which technology and reality are collapsed into each other and the natural and the manmade have become intertwined and indistinguishable in the face of unprecedented ecological change. Like a DJ spinning sounds culled from disparate sources, the forms are remixed through the filters of printmaking, drawing, digital photography, andcollage.
Lingscheit’s body of work links rapid environmental change and geopolitical upheaval in the Anthropocene. Her work critically investigates the ambiguities and exchanges between organisms and non-organisms, between humans and non-humans, and between the “natural” world and our engineered world. This work is informed by speculative fiction, climate disruption, biotechnology, queer theory, and the alarming pace of species extinction planet-wide. Through prints, drawing, and large-scale collage of printed elements, she explores the myriad ways in which we are enmeshed with the non-human, from the cellular level to the global economy. She is particularly interested in the idea and aesthetics of salvaging hope, community, and balance out of repression, division, and environmental catastrophe.
Spolans’ work reveals his interest and frustration with working to understand others. Seeking empathy can be a radical political and personal stance, with it we experience culture, and find community, denying empathy fosters prejudice, and intolerance. On an individual basis, there’s a limit to this understanding. Not everything about an other can be known or understood. Recently, he has experienced the pain of realizing his understanding of others is not as complete as he thought. This work created for this exhibition describes the insecure feeling of inquisitiveness and frustration that is other people.
