Curated by Peter Clough

Including works by:

Kari Adelaide Ariele Affigne Vanessa Albury Ronnie Bass Lea Bertucci Jesse Bransford Jennie Hagevik Bringaker Elaine Cameron-Weir Jung Hee Choi Grayson Cox G Lucas Crane Jonathon deSimone Sonja Engelhardt Marthe Fortun & Samuel Consiglio Mila Geisler Tracey Goodman Jennifer Gustavson Jon Huron Nick Imondi Juliet Jacobson Alex Jovanovich Eun Jin Kim Jiyoon Koo Ellie Krakow Nicole Kuprienko Justin Leathers Stephen Lichty David Matorin Sandra Moak Jeremy Olson Deniz Ozuyger Charlemagne Palestine Elwyn Palmerton Janine Polak Mike Pollard Adam Putnam Max Razdow & Ollie Razdow Tyler Rico Alex Robins Rosalynn Rothstein Allison Somers Jo-ey Tang Gordon Terry Andrew Thompson Sam Tierney John Torreano Audrey Tran Nickolaus Typaldos Matthew Jay Wilson Jan Van Woensel Korey Vincent Patrick Walsh Helena Zhang

One and Three Quarters of an Inch is a one-week group exhibition at the Former Convent at St. Cecilia’s Parish in Greenpoint, New York, opening on Saturday, September 11. The exhibition will bring together the work of 55 artists working in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, performance, video, sound, text, and installation. Taken together, the works represent a matrix of intermingling and sometimes contradictory themes that resist reduction, cohering on the grounds of attitude rather than specific form or content.

As the title suggests, One and Three Quarters of an Inch engages modes of communication that involve the simple statement of fact without description or referent, and without explanation of meaning. What happens to communication between subjects when meaning is either (1) so commonly agreed upon that any stated fact can be understood without ever speaking about what it might mean, or (2) so complicated and fragmented that attempting to specify meaning becomes impossible? Perhaps, mired in an abyss of either too much or too little meaning, we call on a last resort wherein a simple fact becomes the only possible speech utterance. In this case, the title evokes the normal, diminutive, comprehensible, and embodied fact of measurement—one and three quarters of an inch—to take the place of any coherent theme or project. Likewise, One and Three Quarters of an Inch engages artworks as fact-objects deployed to access meanings that are otherwise intangible or unspeakable.

One and Three Quarters of an Inch will take over all four floors of The Former Convent at St. Cecilia’s Parish, a seductively decrepit nunnery-turned-art-space. Comprised of more than 30 rooms and echoing with a history of devotion and ritual, The Convent appropriates—and is appropriated by—whatever is deposited there. Complicating a one-to-one relationship between viewer and artwork, The Convent throws viewers and artists alike into a performative negotiation of meaning in architecture.

One and Three Quarters of an Inch will be presented in the dark, offered up by way of flashlight. Theatricalizing the act of seeking intentionality in objects and emphasizing the sensual experience of seeing, the flashlight-as-mobile-proscenium will generate a series of focused and intimate viewing moments. Objects can only ever be seen from one angle at a time. The directional optics essential to visual experience thwart the impulse toward knowledge in the round. Moving in the dark, flashlight in hand, we fall back into our bodies as the line between ourselves and what we see becomes manifest. Reflected back, from a halo of light through a beam of perception, objects-as-facts expand and transform: moments to meanings, desperation to desire, dispatches into darkness.