How to Stretch: a bodily intimacy
2019, The Lawrence Alloway Gallery, Stony Brook, NY
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EXHIBITION STATEMENT:
With this exhibition, my objective is to cultivate an intimacy between the viewer and the paintings to a degree that verges on discomfort. Walking through the constructed spaces, experiencing a vision obscured by translucent film, and encountering large, fleshy paintings suspended from above evokes the spatial aesthetics of the medical and meat industry as well as the confinement and discomfort involved in medical procedures. From entering an MRI machine and experiencing the sterilized space of an operating room before being anesthetized, to engaging in the elongated strain of stretching ones own hamstring towards physically therapeutic ends, this installation activates discomfort and unease. The invocation of the symbolism of a meat locker alludes to exposed flesh and the industrial manipulation of matter. The practice of exposing and segmenting portions of a body in preparation for further segmentation and preserving these portions of flesh is explicit as it is graphic. This violent and aggressive exposure to the body evokes our relationship to our own flesh, subjecting the viewer to a sublimity, forcing us to confront our own corporeal, vulnerable, and finite existence.
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