First-Person Plural

First-Person Plural
 Curated by Jackie Im and Aaron Harbour
August 5th – 298h, 2011
Reception Friday, August 5th, 7-10 pm
 
MacArthur B Arthur is pleased to announce First-Person Plural, a group show featuring work by Joel Dean, Dana Hemenway and Sasha Krieger. Curated by Jackie Im and Aaron Harbour.

First-Person Plural features new work by Joel Dean, Dana Hemenway, and Sasha Krieger, three artists with widely varying practices. Each artist was invited to produce and show new solo work and subsequently asked to create additional works that will operate as reactions or responses to the other artists. What they have chosen to produce in regards to each other’s work will have come about as a result of communication between the three, coupled with efforts to become familiar with one another’s practices, and to respond with a piece that will avoid overt framing or interpretation. These responsory works will provide or point to some method for navigating conceptually between discrete methodologies and concepts, re-framing the gallery as a site for critically aware dialogue, versus its usual mode as a venue for the presentation of disconnected individual vision.
Though externally disparate, the three artists in First-Person Plural share a depth of inquiry into the act of producing and exhibition work. Joel Dean’s paintings, plainly produced with a minimum of handcraft are a resultant of explorations of the structure of painting - the various decisions such as what and how to paint - providing an impossible but intriguing subject for signification in his simple canvases. Dana Hemenway’s sculptural constructions examine the matter of sculpture and exhibition spaces via subtle co-option of materials such as gallery walls, nails, and paper into surprising juxtapositions and role-reversals. Sasha Krieger’s interdisciplinary work highlights her own artistic doubts and the seemingly impossible task of “originality” via an examination of reference and response.