The handmade knock-offs and makeshift imitations of Iter-iter-ation have an abject power—new, but not improved, they have the ability to evoke emotion. Curated by Natalie Campbell, the artists in this exhibition work in various media to mine the imaginative and emotional possibilities of copying. Each work represents an absurd interpretation of the original. While re-making implies improvement, the artists’ versions are neither bigger nor clearer, nor are they more functional or more efficient than what they mimic. Yet they move us with their familiarity and their inadequacy as serviceable reproductions, compelling us to contemplate the peculiar impulse of creation.

Iter-iter-ation features artists: Michael Bernstein, Christopher Erchick, May Jong, Bridget Lewis, Annette Monnier, Heidi Neilson, Chris Vorhees, Russell Whitmore, and Liz Zanis.

Works by Annette Monnier and Chris Vorhees explore the line between representation and appropriation, remaking everyday, commercial, and/or decorative objects. Michael Bernstein, Heidi Neilson, and Liz Zanis explore the act of giving new physical form to cultural signifiers, as in Monnier’s handwritten copy of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Zanis’ postage-stamp sized reference books, Bernstein’s drawings of almost-words formed by block letters in a cosmic landscape, and Neilson’s prints made from the backside of typeset sonnets by Shakespeare.

Both Bridget Lewis, with a site-specific drawing that takes wallpaper as a starting point, and Christopher Erchick, with his cart/shelter Personal Face Heater, push the idea of re-making or copying in a way that amalgamates and frustrates function, whether decorative or practical.

In many of the works, including May Jong’s video of an airplane, and Russell Whitmore’s re-assembled tree stumps the tenuous, low-tech construction is instrumental in the work’s meaning. Unlikely combinations are made; components are left exposed and untransformed; marks, cuts, edges, layers, bumps, and handling reveal how each work is constructed, exploiting specific physical qualities of their media rather than achieving some polished resolution.

Employing material experimentation, wit and playfulness, each of these copies proposes a path to locate personal meaning in a deadpan subject, focusing our attention on the act of making as much as the object itself.