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Unfathom

July 9, 2007- August 10, 2007

Reception: July 12, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Cameron, Nicolas Rule, Saul Chernick, Gary Stephan, Jessica Dickinson, Chris Martin, Byron Kim, Andrew Guenther, Joseph Montgomery, Alfred Jensen, Mira Dancy, Rico Gatson, Marc Handelman, Eric Heist, Katherine Keltner, Mike Cloud, Ed Blackburn

Max Protetch

511 W 22nd St

An inward gaze has always been a part of the practice of making art and this gaze is by turns self-revealing and questioning. Inevitably, it yields more questions than answers and it is this reflective, existential morass that the artist claims as his or her home, ultimately embracing the questions. Similar to a devotional practice, the maker of art objects affirms his commitment to this nebulous region of the unknown and attempts to harness it in order to make it visible. Words like “sublime” and “magic” are used in reference to this experience, though perhaps alternate words such as “ecstasy” or “divinity” could be used here as well. The artist’s wish to make visible and the adherent's desire to understand both encompass the need to make that which is ineffable a part of their being.

–Aaron Williams

When Aaron and I began discussing Unfathom we used the word “spirituality,” which we vowed not to include in the official materials for the show. Alas, I’ve used it and have been using it to describe what we’ve put together to numerous people over the last few months, and I’ve used it again here now. Why the impulse to censor this word? In these conversations, ‘spiritual,’ as used in the context of contemporary art, has elicited a range of responses: ‘necessary,’ ‘better left unspoken,’ ‘unhip,’ ‘about to come to the forefront,’ ‘that’s a difficult label,’ ‘of course spirituality is a part of what I do,’ ‘I grew up with such-and-such and though I don’t practice it any more…’

What is the spiritual? In what way does this word, and the umbrella it provides for a spectrum of activities too broad to enumerate here, act as a latent or manifest force in contemporary art? On a certain level, of course, it’s impossible to separate the spiritual from most aesthetic practice, and yet we sense in the work of the artists included in Unfathom a direct application of spiritual presence. It’s a tribute to the artists involved and the diversity of artmaking represented in their practices that this application can occur in such diverging and even contradictory ways. For instance, some of this work takes a critical stance, achieving on a quasi-pictorial level an examination of the pitfalls associated with spiritual (read: religious) activity. Other work explores the spiritual as it is manifest in light and optics, or the way in which it directly and indirectly establishes parameters for how to work in the studio.

In each of these examples criticality and enthusiasm play parts in coming to terms with what Aaron calls ‘the need to make that which is ineffable a part of [the artist’s] being.’ On a sheer experiential level, Unfathom concerns itself with the formal problem of approaching something that resists form, with adding measures of the visual to an invisible terrain.

– Stuart Krimko

Books and DVDs related to artists in this show

Location map  Gallery Max Protetch Address 511 W 22nd St New York (Chelsea) NY, 10011 United States Phone 212-633-6999 Fax 212-691-4342 Hours Tue-Sat 10-6

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