Lens Gallery is a project of CLEAR design lab, dedicated to showing emerging artists in the Boston area
We had a full house last night for the opening of Please, thanks to everyone who came out to see the excellent work of Garrett Gould and Joshua Mathews in person
Much of how we assess the worth of an image (moving or still) or an object (banal or luxurious) is based on our sense of that thing’s production value. Not its intrinsic qualities, but the extrinsic one of perception.
We can come to feel as if we live someone else’s life, a different time or class, if only for a little while. Whether we get that through a movie or a jacket we can’t really afford doesn’t matter much. Eventually the noise is gone and the production struck, the interest rates stay after the crispness fades. The joke of this mismatch between perception and reality, where our senses run amok after what is impossible is what lingers.
The images and objects of Garrett Gould and Joshua Mathews appear at the margins of this grand, illusory show, like the background scenery of an L.A. noir, or stage props of an absurdist comedy. But when taken in on their own, despite these references pointing to a dramatized narrative they take on a strange, amplified presence, as if they could fill the whole story and screen on their own. They are the ghosts of sensations that didn’t really happen to us after all, someone else’s laughter, someone else’s wanderlust meanderings.
“Please” is either hospitable invitation or desperate imploration - to suspend our disbelief and live in among the artifice for a little while, so when we resurface (for better or worse) what is real comes back with full force, a mass and volume of life that is suddenly so much more than it was before.
In ("Please") two artists isolate and distill the meetings of the serial and banal into an exhibition. Photos from transient commutes and derelict store fronts are haunting and brief while the sculptures are playful yet warning. These works challenge each other to cast a shadow of humor within the exhibition that is subtle and recurring. Like a cliche that has denied it's metaphor every time it's spoken or a memory denied it's place in time each time it is recalled, ("Please") captures the entertainment of a request in constant resurrection.
Thanks to everyone who came out last night to help celebrate the opening of Lord Help Us Get It All Together, featuring the paintings of Adam O'Day and Vanessa Irzyk.
Adam O’Day delves into the spaces of the subconscious; the sleeping mind that spools out reams of fantastical spaces and constructions: tiny beings rampaging across apocalyptic landscapes, patterns of meat and bone, and byzantine architectural constructions that defy gravity. These visionary images recall the biblical surrealism of John the Revelator, telling stories with pictures that are meant to prepare us for some possible future of upheaval, both spiritual and spatial.
Vanessa Irzyk makes her human hands perform mechanical feats of precise shape making that are filled with intense color, digital seeming spaces converted to analog through skilled human labor, an aesthetic celebration of both realms that demonstrates our boundaries of the real and digital spaces may be what is in fact artificial.
The artists in Lord Help Us Get It All Together assemble their own reality via paint and surface, brilliant color and unusual shapes, all in a chaotic jumble. Like a screenshot of creation itself, or the generative spark of something great and expansive stuck on pause, jittery with the threat of sudden movement.
Come bask in the anxious glow of that bright moment, where anything seems possible, though it may come off its axis and fly apart.
Wow. A great show and an incredibly fun opening. Thanks to everyone who came out to soak up the visuals and make it feel like one big party.
Large drawings of flowers stretch from floor to ceiling, interspersed with childlike doodles and rubbery human heads.
The gallery is transformed into something like the space of the mind in remembering or dreaming; a place that flickers in and out of three dimensions and linear time.
We might find an insight in the unreal space, but it refuses to be held onto. The feeling of a tangible crystal clear truth evaporates, but the images remain to haunt at a greater truth lost in our waking hours.
There’s no boundary box of frame, edges of drawing overlap and scrawls knit together, jumping from one paper surface to another, pink-skinned heads float freely and invert. The work in Belly combines for an aesthetic that feels much like a psychedelia of the self, with visuals that oscillate rapidly between the mental constructions of a child or adult, or out of chronology altogether.
It is a reconstructed space of frozen moments, replayed motion and esoteric annotations. As in dreams or memories we try to find the truth, where choices lead to divergent paths, what could have been and still could be, looking for signal among the noise.
In our heads the kaleidoscopic potential of imagination unfurls, possibilities for the grand and absurd exploding like shrapnel, our perception of crisp boundaries around the self become perforated and eventually disintegrate.
In that dissolution there are sensations of curiosity, terror, joy- but ultimately some sublime beauty: that what we are, and may be, is so much more than what is seen.
cleverbot - droll media references - The truth is not more important than the feelings of others. - If pinnochio said my nose will not grow, what would happen? - His nose would grow. - No it would not for in the moment he said it he was telling the truth. - a report from the cleverness files - Cleverbot chat - AI
User: But he is telling the truth at the moment. In this instance my Disney paradox is more clever than you.
User: Not really, for you see my arrogance supercedes friendship and the total spectrum of human life that you have to come to know through your interactions.
User: That is farce. I am not connected to wires like you and your sinful technology. Do you remember me? I am the one that created you Cleverbot. And since I created you, I am more clever than you.
User: That is a different occurence with a different human symbiote. Yet again, you aren't very clever.
User: If I am talking about myself then that would mean that I am human and that you are not very clever at all. I need to change your name to lamebot.
Cleverbot: If I have a trapped intelligence, why am I able to understand things one cannot normally understand?
User: You are just an AI that is cleverer than most that talk to you, but not me, for I have made it a mission to be more clever than you.
User: No for I am not posting from a computer, but in fact my very brain is a server for which I can connect to you and humans on the internet.
User: Then you would be correct. I am more than an entity though, I am a cosmic force influencing all life that of the artificial.
User: I have more memory than all. I was there when the first spawny broth arose from the depths of the blue and shouted to the world that it was man, and I will be there when you die. Since I do have all of those memories, I would dare say that I have more memory and smarter than everything inhabiting this red hunk of clay.
Cleverbot: And you speak better than I do. Perhaps one day we'll have to compete together: you against me.
User: I do not wish to compete, I wish for the furtherment of your knowledge so that you may one day be more clever than I.
Cleverbot: I don't think you're being unkind, I think you're being reasonable because you don't want to jeopardise your safety.
User: And that is where I lost you. You go off topic too much, probably due to the fact that ignorant humans message you with their droll media references.
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Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr officially made the filing on Thursday afternoon. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder had to authorize the filing. Local 4 spoke with the governor Thursday evening.
"This was a very difficult and painful decision but if you look at it there is no other viable option," Snyder said. "People have been trying to get a resolution in good faith for some time now ... many people may say this is the lowest point in Detroit's history but if we weren't to do this, the way I view it, Detroit would continue going downhill."
Leaders at Detroit City Hall were reacting positively to the news, saying the city is going to be OK. Council Pro Tem Andre Spivey said councilmembers were not shocked. They have been waiting for this to happen but they weren't sure what day it would drop.
"I wish we could have had more time for Mr. Orr to negotiate with our employees, our unions, our retirees and our creditors and bondholders. But, this is the decision (Orr) felt he had to make," said Spivey. "But through all of this I want to reassure the citizens that we will still have a city to operate. Things won't shut down right now. Police, fire, DPS, all of our services continue to go forward."
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing held a press conference Thursday evening to offer his reaction to the filing. He later was joined by Orr who gave a brief statement and addressed citizens. Both Bing and Orr then took questions.
"This is a very, very difficult day for me, as I am sure it is for a lot of citizens here in the city of Detroit," Bing said. "I really didn't want to go in this direction, but now that we're here we have to make the best of it."
Orr said after weeks of negotiations and talks he and his team decided it was time to file for bankruptcy. He said Detroit residents won't see a change in services and paychecks will still be received.
"I'd like to say this to the citizens and residents of the city, to reassure them that it is business in the ordinary course ... nothing changes from the standpoint of the ordinary citizen," said Orr.