The Side-Eye: Visions of Periphery
Work by Alex Coxen, Jean Nagai, S.E. Nash, Jonathan Purtill, Jing Qin, Jared Stanley, Oakley Tapola, and Christian Vargas {Click here to see the collection}Curated by Alana-lynn Berglund + Austin Pratt + Tom Wixo
March 6 - March 12, 2018
Booth 2324, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York City, New York
Statement:
The searing glance of the side-eye invokes contempt or disapproval of the subject; an immediate gesture distancing self from other. But sometimes in that stinging gesture, a softer, fuzzier signal of curiosity or concern is projected. Philosopher George Santayana wrote that “skepticism is the chastity of the intellect,” proffering the idea that one can finally drop their guard once the right suitor is discovered. Transforming negative to critical, or skepticism into curiosity through the relationships between strange and familiar, The Side-Eye: Visions of Periphery considers the relationship between edges and centers.
In response to the SPRING/BREAK Art Show theme "Stranger Comes to Town", this exhibition highlights artists from or living generally outside global art centers, often alternative centers. Some of these artists directly consider their own relationships to place, or to the natural world. Further peripheries are explored in work with slippery categorical definitions, difficult to pin down to familiar medium, process, or function. And at the peripheries of painting, sculpture, music, or food there are unnamable strangers.
Slideshow:
Photographs courtesy of Samuel Morgan Photography
Selected Works:
Photographs courtesy of the artists