The Sensation of Sensing
by Jacquelyn Strycker
Sensing Elsewhere (here), an exhibition of works by members of the MFA Art Practice Class of 2016, explores an expanded notion of the sensorial in response to a sense of displacement. The often meditative pieces ask us to reflect upon the sensation of sensing: the experience of interpreting the construction of a memory.
Flashing words, fuzzy dark shapes and the sound of plucked guitar strings in Marnie Navarro’s three channel video installation, Rubicon/Remnant/Render evoke the exhaustion of an unforgiving desert landscape.
Clark Hubert Guy’s local homage, two hanging cradles woven from recycled wood and wrapped with thick twine, reference Chinese funeral rituals.
Elissa Ecker’s this is not a trap, nine plexiglass boxes displaying synthetic hair extensions, chunks woven into Chinese finger traps, connects materials with materialism.
Just so you know, it’s easier to be naked because then you’re distracted from my lying mouth, a performance by Alexandra Sullivan, employs volunteers to read phrases off her nude body, allowing the artist to avoid conversation while eliciting a false sense of intimacy.
Point, a two channel video by Rori Knudtson about the Global Seed Vault, employs the screen to conjure a sense of in between— a space between the here and now, and future possibilities.
Kevin Townsend’s durational drawing documents invite the viewer to watch the artist as he creates a site-specific drawing in another space, projected onto the gallery wall. His sculptures, held, exhaled, suspended, are simultaneously beautiful and repulsive as they softly pulse, emitting the odor of stale, cheap beer.
Sarah Grass’ installation of objects placed on wee wee pads atop a vacuumed carpet enclosed by baby gates presents us with an absurd invitation to mark one’s territory in this tidy space.
Griselda Lopez’s Calma, temporal uses light and shadow to construct the memory of a space.
Laura Scandrett’s My Magic Mountain, a rock-climbing journey projected onto painted silk, addresses mortality and landscape. We’re instructed to touch a single stone that was displaced from the mountain’s peak, imbuing it with our energy as it’s covered with our fingerprints, before it will be replaced on the mountain next fall.
In many of the works— Guy’s woven vessels, Grass’ almost precious miniatures made from polymer clay, Lopez’s carefully threaded wall drawing, Scandrett’s gridded photographs, and even Townsend’s chandeliers of beer filled plastic bags— there’s an attention to craft. Craft becomes ritual as the artists craft mantras, craft calm, craft contemplation.
Making is meditation. Through process, we sense elsewhere and here.