Educational Alliance / Ernest Rubenstein Gallery
197 East Broadway, 212-780-2300, ext. 378
East Village / Lower East Side
December 6, 2006 - January 11, 2007
Reception: Wednesday, December 6, 6 - 9 PM
Web Site
Curated by David Gibson
Artists: Peter Barrett, Caroline Burton, Jeff Feld, Danielle Mysliwiec, Keiko Narahashi, Mary Ann Strandell, Bradley Wester, John Zinsser
SQUARED engages the cultural significance of the right angle, a supposition of orderliness and authority in all matters intuitive. The artists participating in this exhibition have taken it upon themselves to confront the quality of disinterested hegemony which right-angled forms represent. In some cases, they have attended to the interior area of the square, producing labyrinths, while others have found inspiration in replicating the silhouette of this primary form in quantum varieties and progressions; others still have applied their interest to the visual form of the grid, in which minimal forms intersect with utility and coalesce in each segment with a degree of infinite perception, as if they were measurements of time rather than space. The artist’s role as an interlocutor of cultural aims is made tangent to the compartmentalized mentality of a businesslike society, achingly sensible and orderly yet inherently obsessive. The square forms that inhabit these art works relate to the mathematical systems responsible for architecture, the internet, and methods of government structure and social control. They are both a fulcrum and a vortex, guarding against mystery while providing it as well.