Today we face a catastrophe, a tragic pandemic, which since its beginning in December 2019 has spread fast across the world. Mirroring the movements of global capitalism and tracing its injustices Covid-19 washes up the pre-existing structural and systematic inequalities in Western societies to its surface. “Coronavirus does not discriminate, because that’s what humans do,” writes the author Rebecca Solnit. Surely every human is vulnerable to the virus. However, how strong the virus affects our lives depends on our social and financial securities, as Solnit argues: “People who face racism, sexism and inequality are more likely to get sick.” The pandemic and its consequences on our usual activities seem uncanny and frightening. We all experience social isolation, but some of us have to deal with threats of their economic existence, domestic violence, and racial discrimination.

In every crisis there is also a chance for improvement. Right now, we all feel sensitive about what is happening around us, and have more time to look into our environments and rethink our standing in the world. The online exhibition Reset offers an opportunity for developing new perspectives on micro and macro levels concerning individual and collective prospects.

The pandemic affects the cultural sector enormously. All museums and galleries are closed, art fairs have been cancelled. Due to the lack of income for ticketing art institutions are facing a general existential threat—not to mention all freelancers in the creative industries. Fact is, nobody can predict the future of contemporary art world after the crisis, but it will change. To keep cultural production alive, as in all our current movements, it demands solidarity and imaginative thinking. The enforced quarantine gives art professionals enough time to reset and restructure the common practices of showing and experiencing art in digital formats.

By presenting works by over 20 artists Reset dives into most diverse artistic practices and topics of contemporary art. To name a few, the work Parish (2013) by Marnie Bettridge is probably the most intriguing in terms of reflecting on the current situation. Placing miniature houses on the edge of cliff-like sticks fixed on the wall, Bettridge’s work embodies our anxiety of losing the ground below our feet. The ceramics with the title I Always Wish my Stomach Was Small (2019) by Helen Juliet Atkins hint to the worrying prospects of increasing diseases caused by overweight such as diabetes, which first studies show will most likely increase during the pandemic due to lack of movement and calorie-heavy diet at home. Works such as Power Pumps and Super Spray (Weapons of the Anthropocene) (2019) by Jennifer Vasher are sculptures in somewhat abstract shape of a soap dispenser that can be read as both critical and ironic statement on the capitalist rituals of cleanliness, which now encounter an abnormal dominant presence in our daily lives. Chelsea Darter’s Dadsporch (2019) or Fawn’s Bed (2019) are photographic views into the inner of our homes that we might have become more familiar with than ever before. Pujan Shakupa contributed with photographs to the online presentation, which tackle curiosities in seemingly ordinary settings. Subsequent thereto, in Untitled (2020) Kristiane Kegelmann created objects made of steel and aluminum filled with organic substances such as elderflower or lavender questioning supposedly opposite qualities of materials such as stable and fluid, natural and artificial, or ephemeral and indestructible. Whereas in the works such as What does the Light Remember? (2020) Dan Hojnacki investigates the landscape surrounding Albuquerque on its historical and geological matter opening up new narratives.

A very special contribution to the exhibition is the loan from the Kuhn Collection of the work Unerwünschte Geschenke (Unwanted Gifts) by the already deceased artist Sigmar Polke from 2003. Referring to Roy Lichtenstein’s dots and the Pop Art movement, Polke once humorously declared: “I love all the dots. I am married to many dots. I want all dots to be happy. The dots are my brothers. I too am a dot. Back in the day, we all played together, but today, everyone goes their own way.” Today, Polke’s thoughts appear as a reminder to find our way back to togetherness.

What all participating artists have in common is their way of encouraging the viewer to take different paths, to find joy in abstract forms as well as in everyday expressions, and mostly to look at their environment in an unbiased and open mindset. To acknowledge that not everyone finds themselves in a privileged situation entails a positive change for future scenarios.

In addition to the online exhibition, birds + Richard organizes an online auction (C19 Auction). All profit from the auction goes into the food delivery service Sticky Fingers on Wheels that will invest into buying food from local businesses and farmers, and prepare dishes for the ones in need. Reset sends a strong message of solidarity and social activism bringing different population groups together. Feeling loneliness we experience the same distress as feeling hungry. Sticky Fingers on Wheels addresses both by delivering food and showing that everyone matters, and others care. Reset means to reconnect with family, friends, neighbors, local inhabitants, and internationally operating art professionals from different social and economic backgrounds.

+ About (German)

“In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.” Frank O’Hara

“Taking care of each other begins with understanding the differences.” Rebecca Solnit

Heute stehen wir vor einer Katastrophe, einer tragischen Pandemie, die sich seit ihrem Beginn im Dezember 2019 schnell über die ganze Welt verbreitet hat. Als Spiegel der Bewegungen des globalen Kapitalismus und auf der Spur seiner Ungerechtigkeiten bringt Covid-19 die bereits bestehenden strukturellen und systematischen Ungleichheiten in den westlichen Gesellschaften an die Oberfläche. "Coronavirus diskriminiert nicht, denn das ist es, was Menschen tun", schreibt die Autorin Rebecca Solnit. Sicherlich ist jeder Mensch anfällig für das Virus. Wie stark das Virus unser Leben beeinträchtigt, hängt jedoch von unseren sozialen und finanziellen Sicherheiten ab, wie Solnit argumentiert: "Menschen, die mit Rassismus, Sexismus und Ungleichheit konfrontiert sind, werden mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit krank.“ Die Pandemie und ihre Folgen für unsere gewohnte Tätigkeiten scheinen nahezu unheimlich und beängstigend. Wir alle erleben soziale Isolation, aber einige von uns haben mit der Bedrohung ihrer wirtschaftlichen Existenz, häuslicher Gewalt und Rassendiskriminierung zu kämpfen.

Jede Krise birgt auch eine Chance auf Verbesserung. Gerade jetzt fühlen wir uns empfänglich für das, was um uns herum geschieht, und haben mehr Zeit, uns mit unserem Umfeld auseinanderzusetzen und unsere Stellung in der Welt zu überdenken. Die Online-Ausstellung Reset bietet die Möglichkeit, auf Mikro- und Makroebenen neue Sichtweisen für individuelle und kollektive Perspektiven zu entwickeln.

Die Pandemie hat enorme Auswirkungen auf den Kultursektor. Alle Museen und Galerien sind geschlossen beziehungsweise eröffnen langsam unter strikten Auflagen, Kunstmessen wurden abgesagt. Aufgrund fehlender Einnahmen für die Eintritte sind Kunstinstitutionen einer allgemeinen existenziellen Bedrohung ausgesetzt - ganz zu schweigen von allen Freiberuflerinnen in der Kreativwirtschaft. Tatsache ist, dass niemand die Zukunft der zeitgenössischen Kunstwelt nach der Krise vorhersagen kann, aber sie wird sich verändern. Um die kulturelle Produktion am Leben zu erhalten, erfordert sie, wie in allen unseren gegenwärtigen Bewegungen, Solidarität und kreatives Umdenken. Die erzwungene Quarantäne gibt den Kunstschaffenden genügend Zeit, die gängigen Praktiken des Zeigens und Erlebens von Kunst in digitalen Formaten neu zu ordnen und umzustrukturieren.

Mit der Präsentation von Werken von über 20 Künstlerinnen taucht Reset in verschiedenste künstlerische Praktiken und Themen der zeitgenössischen Kunst ein. Um nur einige zu nennen: Das Werk Parish (2013) von Marnie Bettridge ist wahrscheinlich das faszinierendste in Bezug auf die Reflexion der aktuellen Situation. Indem sie Miniaturhäuser auf den Rand von an der Wand befestigten, klippenartigen Holzstöcken stellt, verkörpert Bettridges Werk unsere Angst, den Boden unter den Füßen zu verlieren. Die Keramiken mit dem Titel I Always Wish my Stomach Was Small (2019) von Helen Juliet Atkins weisen auf die beunruhigenden Aussichten auf eine Zunahme der durch Übergewicht verursachten Krankheiten wie Diabetes hin, die den ersten Studien zufolge während der Pandemie aufgrund von Bewegungsmangel und kalorienreicher Ernährung zu Hause höchstwahrscheinlich zunehmen werden. *

Arbeiten wie Power Pumps und Super Spray (Weapons of the Anthropocene) (2019) von Jennifer Vasher sind Skulpturen in der abstrakten Form eines Seifenspenders, die sowohl als kritische als auch ironische Stellungnahme zu den kapitalistischen Ritualen der Sauberkeit gelesen werden können, die nun auf fast schon abnormale Art und Weise in unserem täglichen Leben präsent sind. Dadsporch (2019) oder Fawn's Bed (2019) von Chelsea Darter sind fotografische Einblicke in das Innere unserer Häuser, mit denen wir vielleicht vertrauter geworden sind als je zuvor. Pujan Shakupa trug mit Fotografien zu der Online-Ausstellung bei, die sich mit Kuriositäten in scheinbar gewöhnlichen Umgebungen auseinandersetzen. Im Anschluss daran schuf Kristiane Kegelmann im Werk Untitled (2020) Objekte aus Stahl und Aluminium, die mit organischen Substanzen wie Holunderblüten oder Lavendel gefüllt sind und vermeintlich gegensätzliche Eigenschaften von Materialien wie stabil und flüssig, natürlich und künstlich oder vergänglich und unzerstörbar in Frage stellen. Wohingegen in den Arbeiten wie What does the Light Remember? (2020) Dan Hojnacki die Landschaft um Albuquerque auf ihre historische und geologische Materie untersucht und damit neue Narration andeutet.

Ein ganz besonderer Beitrag zur Ausstellung ist die Leihgabe aus der Sammlung Kuhn mit dem Werk Unerwünschte Geschenke des bereits verstorbenen Künstlers Sigmar Polke aus dem Jahr 2003. Mit Bezug auf Roy Lichtensteins Punkte und die Pop-Art-Bewegung hat Polke einmal humorvoll erklärt: "Ich liebe alle Punkte. Ich bin mit vielen Punkten verheiratet. Ich will, dass alle Punkte glücklich sind. Die Punkte sind meine Brüder. Auch ich bin ein Punkt. Früher haben wir alle zusammen gespielt, aber heute geht jeder seinen eigenen Weg." Heute erscheinen Polkes Gedanken wie eine Mahnung, den Weg zurück zum Miteinander zu finden.

Allen teilnehmenden Künstlerinnen und Künstlern gemeinsam ist die Art und Weise, wie sie den Betrachter ermutigen, unterschiedliche Wege zu gehen, Freude an abstrakten Formen wie auch an alltäglichen Ausdrücken zu finden sowie meist unvoreingenommen und offen auf ihre Umwelt zu blicken. Anzuerkennen, dass nicht jeder sich in einer privilegierten Situation befindet, bedeutet eine positive Veränderung für zukünftige Szenarien.

Zusätzlich zur Online-Ausstellung organisieren birds + Richard eine Online-Auktion (C19 Auction). Der gesamte Gewinn aus der Auktion geht an den Lieferdienst Sticky Fingers on Wheels, der in den Kauf von Lebensmitteln von lokalen Unternehmen und Bauern investiert und Gerichte für die Bedürftigen zubereitet. Reset sendet eine starke Botschaft der Solidarität und des sozialen Aktivismus aus, die verschiedene Bevölkerungsgruppen zusammenbringt. Wenn wir uns einsam fühlen, erleben wir die gleiche Bedrängnis wie, wenn wir uns hungrig fühlen. Sticky Fingers on Wheels wendet sich sowohl an die Menschen, indem es ihnen Essen bringt, als auch indem es ihnen zeigt, dass alle wichtig sind und andere sich um sie kümmern. Reset bedeutet, wieder mit Familie, Freunden, Nachbarn, Einheimischen und international tätigen Kunstschaffenden mit unterschiedlichem sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Hintergrund in Kontakt zu treten.

Installation Shots

Exhibition in Albuquerque, NM (by appointment only). Not all of the works of this online exhibition are shown.

Online Exhibition

CLAIRE ASHLEY

Works

Video Statement

Statement

The work included in RESET

Is an echo,

A mirror,

A residue of my larger practice

This echo is a result

Of the aeration that happens

When the spray paint

Records the facets,

Folds, and wrinkles of the paper

These echoes are created quickly

On a much smaller scale

Than the rest of my work

They capture the mixture

Of light, air, and color

As it rests on the surface

HELEN Juliet ATKINS

Works

Video Statement

Statement

My work explores the symbiotic nature between individuals and their communities, especially how one’s sense of self is affected by culture. These pieces represent different series, but both comment on notions of beauty. “I Always Wished My Stomach Was Small,” is a critical response to skinny-supremacist norms. “Shroud” with its mirrored surface, references gilded byzantine icons, but depicts a less “divine” scene. I view religious and beauty rituals as culturally related- both practices that promise transformation with the subtext that our bodies are insufficient. This work evokes the resulting disassociation between identity and physicality.

As our daily lives, and their routines, are critically disrupted in a new global climate, this cultural pressure is even more relevant and severe. These figurative pieces, though distinct, remain somewhat anonymous. This allows the viewer to insert themselves into the artworks, and to consider their physicality in relation to cultural notions of beauty and secular piety.

MARNIE BETTRIDGE

Works

Statement

Parish 2013. Porcelain, white earthenware, abandoned photographs

Installed directly into the wall, these peninsulas are the artist’s way of expressing a certain modern type of isolation she sees and feels. The photographs are bought at second hand stores or street fairs. Once precious objects of familiarity, now novel orphans, she gives them new homes.

Chelsea Darter

Works

Video Statement

Statement

On the series “A Prairie Fisher King”

The life expectancy of a typical birch may be short in comparison to other trees, but the species is hardy while it lasts. The tree is one that first emerges in the renewal of damaged ecosystems and has the capacity to endure harsh conditions long enough to bear witness to multiple generations of human experience. So, when Chelsea Darter writes of her great-great-great grandmother Augusta giving birth to a set of twins in a field at the age of 16, it is not unreasonable to presume that her ancestor’s pained gaze may have fallen upon the very same colony of birch trees Chelsea has the opportunity to visit today.

A Prairie Fisher King, Darter’s rumination on family and self through poetic photographs and text, invokes the legend of a wounded Arthurian king; a figure rendered impotent who presides over barren land, slowly wasting away, as he awaits the arrival of a savior to heal his wounds and restore growth to his kingdom. As Darter weaves her way through a narrative of familial hardship, she invites a window on to her own homeland in rural Iowa, a place that bears the burden of its own scars. However, unlike the incapacitated king, what the viewer is privileged to access through Darter’s procession of portraiture, still lifes and landscapes, paced by bleak moments of text stripped bare, is an attempt by the reluctant hero, Chelsea, to transition out of the role of the wounded and into that of the healer.

The depiction of a recently burned field from the perspective of one looming over a newly dug grave. A middle-aged woman, hooded and cloaked before an open road, standing as both protector and protected beside her yellow lab, gaze averted and waiting. The entropic interior tableaux of unlit Christmas lights, hoarded grocery bags, and detritus from the autumn’s pumpkin harvest, seated before a window revealing the dormant landscape just beyond. And a complicated, wavering list of adjectives from the pen of Darter herself: dry, patchy, overgrown, rotting, ghost-like, dead, empty; pure, magnificent, glistening, otherworldly, eternal, beautiful, fierce. In each instance, Darter reveals her own recognition of her subjects, trapped in suspended climax, awaiting permission to move forward. She reveals her willingness to confront perpetual turmoil, if only to compel a different outcome than those from the cycles of her past.

The paper-like skin of a live birch tree, peeled away, will reveal hidden histories of growth and decay, survivals and threats, and the scars from harms endured, before it regenerates a new, healthy, shiny layer. But if the skin is peeled back too far, the tree may succumb to irreparable harm. In A Prairie Fisher King, Chelsea Darter flirts with just this. How deep can one dig to reveal the buried burdens of the past, to pursue repair, without setting in motion an undesired and irreversible course of events? The

narrative Darter presents stands as evidence of the choices that confront her as she dares to attempt escape from her stubborn wounds.

Jon Horvath

Artist and Educator

KATIE C. Doyle

Works

Je, 2015 - Performance for the camera, or an exploration of the constant surprise of disappointment. Digital video, 2:52

Video Statement

Statement

The human necessity to make marks is not just literal; it exists through tradition, through movement, through task, through stillness, and through objects. The contrast of bodily ephemera with the permanence of objects intrigues me. The way the body takes agency over form, and how that authority does not transcend, but further demarcates the existence of ephemera.

There is a parity of the senses between the object, the body, the passing of time, and the futility of desire. Drawing from femme identity, this quagmire manifests itself in anxiety, sexuality, accumulation, instability, hysteria, tradition, collective memory, and trauma. Performing gendered exercises or endurance tests, exploring and consuming my own body is a large part of my work. Through performative making, I manifest objects indicative of both body horror and body humor. It is the space between horror and humor that I find seductive – A space of silenced orifices, crawling nerves, and unreleased tension that never fully resolves itself. The residue of this process exists as an artifact, holding the place of the intimate moment of creation that goes unwitnessed.

Jorinde Fischer

Works

Statement

What radiates from Jorinde Fischer's work is a difficult to define beauty, a delightful - oppressing yeees ... Textiles, industrial products form the starting point for something that could be called drapery if it were not so obviously distanced from figure, from decor. It presents itself in a synthetic intrinsic color, steel serves as a suspension or weight, visible or invisible, on the floor or wall. The result oscillates violently, one wants to recognize beings in these hangings, strains, folds, but it cannot, the formative intervention is too minimal, its conception too strict and clear. Model and drawing prepare the wind for style ice, invisible movement, tension orange, titles such as walks, barefoot on carpets ...

Was von Jorinde Fischers Arbeiten abstrahlt ist ein schwer definierbares Schön, ein beglückend – bedrückendes Jaaa... Textilien, Industrieprodukte bilden den Ausgangspunkt von etwas, das man als Draperie bezeichnen könnte, wäre es nicht so offensichtlich entrückt von Figur, von Dekor. In synthetischer Eigenfarbigkeit präsentiert es sich, Stahl dient sichtbar oder unsichtbar als Aufhängung oder Gewicht, an Boden, Wand. Das Ergebnis oszilliert heftig, man will Wesen erkennen in diesen Hängungen, Zerrungen, Faltungen, kann es doch nicht, zu minimal ist der formende Eingriff, zu streng und klar seine Konzeption. Modell und Zeichnung bereiten den Wind für Stileis, Invisible Movement, Tension Orange, Titel wie Spaziergänge, barfuß auf Teppichboden...

Text: Johannes Bierlein

Kai Franz

Work

42 minutes in 1 minute (twice), 2009, 1:50 minutes

Video Statement

Statement

“…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.”

Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science, 1946

Daniel Hojnacki

Works

Video Statement

Statement

This ongoing collection of work uses the apparatus of a 4x5 camera and it’s film to create in camera manipulations of the natural landscape. I use acts of redaction and addition by cutting and altering substrates that are photographed through in real time, forcing the image into a collaged and confusing array of light, space and form. My actions and images are a reaction to my lack of personal memory associated with the New Mexico landscape and the histories I have researched into the locations I choose to photograph. The landscape of New Mexico holds within it a vast and immense memory. It has been cut, shaped and sold through land grants, the compartmentalization of reservations, and acts of mining. My photographs and the gestures I use are an attempt for me to learn about the memory of the landscape, one that isn’t my own, but acknowledging it’s traumatic existence as it continues to be manipulated by human hand. All works I conduct have been photographed on either private, BLM or public lands. I do not photograph on any reservations or tribal lands unless a permit is purchased beforehand.

kristiane kegelmann

Works

Video Statement

Statement

A grasp for space is part of all my works, although I don’t conceive myself as a sculptor in the classical sense. Rather, I explore my environment and tame these impressions in small- format as well as large-scale works, with sculptural thinking always playing a significant role. I frequently design my sculptures and expansive installations as a link between myself and the beholder. Ephemeral materials, such as edible components, are always an important part for opening a communicative space that allows unpredictable interpersonal connections between the recipient and myself. At the same time, however, transience is always faced with elements that dictate the latter's content and also assume structural tasks. Apparently imperishable materials such as concrete, glass and iron give my works a constant framework and thus the opportunity within this conceived construct to pursue new ideas and impulses. I constantly challenge my fellow human beings to become part of my world of thoughts, to participate and others to confront their ideas with mine. The transformation of one state into the next forms the basis of my approach to the various materials and serves me as a moment of completing my sculptures.

My artistic work reflects my constant inner engagement with honesty and sincerity, which is expressed through a process of deception and confrontation with reality in my works. From my perspective, reality is never that which is smooth, beautiful, superficial or perfect in appearance. Instead, it is always also that which is fragile, cracked, morbid, ephemeral.

Therefore, I illuminate topics below the surface where one can recognize the true identities of these. Observers are asked to use their hands to actively change and destroy these surfaces in my works so that the foundation can come to light.

Rebecca Loyche

Works

Still Life I, 2011 - Digital Video, 5:14m

Video Statement

Statement

Verloren is a photo series that captures the disappearing tradition and personal touch of inscribing books. These earnest writings leave traces of relationships that happened and have now passed. The found inscription opens up your imagination about the dedicator and the receiver, like finding someone’s secret note. By analyzing handwriting you can also tell a lot about the wordsmith, from the tiny decorative cursive slanting right reveals the shyness of a young woman in love or the written precision of sage words of a poetic inscriber on a solemn book.

There is also a tension between the book title and what is inscribed; therefore the title of each image is the book title, Beau Ideal, The Gates of the Forest, Intra Muras etc. The images show the wear and tear of time and act like a silent memorial to a moment in two people’s lives that is now over. These books meant something to people at one time, to gift them, to write a personal message or advice, to perhaps cherish and now have been discarded.

Lisa Mühleisen

Works

Video Statement

Statement

“The Shape Of Things to Come” is an ongoing series by artist Lisa Mühleisen. Every single booklet constitutes a chapter which is dedicated to a distinct central topic in order to formulate concrete theses, observations and suggestions regarding her visual perception. It is both constantly in the progress of developing, transforming and varying as well as systematically integrated in exhibitions.

The series is the basis for her work and functions as an uncensored stage for primary thoughts and visions.

Status report of absent exchange.

“In the unlimited waiting room” is a text by Lisa Mühleisen which discusses the potential of unintended waiting, boredom and infinite space. The original text is published in English, French and German.

more info

The need for structure as a guideline in temporary confusion.

The fear of shapelessness following an overstructured world.

Studies of the number 4, concerning the sound of the word itself and the construction type of the given marks.

more info

Anna Nero

Works

Video Statements

Statement

My work deals with different modalities of painting and the possibilities of image-making, and representation. It frequently starts with the input given to me by my everyday environment, which can be banal, formal, trendy, vulgar or even silly.

In the process, I constantly cross paths between strict and sleek geometrical forms and bold, playful brush strokes. Those two are the poles between which my paintings oscillate - constructed and intuitive, strict and playful. Most paintings start with systematic grids and patterns, which are overpainted by gestures and forms in the following process. The grid makes it easier for me to 'place' objects or gestures on the canvas, and it is an operating, organizing system as well as an element in the painting itself.

I'm interested in the question when and whether paint becomes object or space.

General illusion of space or object, whether by coincidence, high craftsmanship or easy DIY-technique interests me, so I mix different ways of applying paint to the canvas and work with different structures and layers.

Resulting from this, the material becomes the subject of my work rather than remaining a tool only.

Brush strokes or thick worms of paint pressed directly from the tube develop their own 'life' or 'agenda, which I support by giving my paintings titles like 'Strokes Trapped in A Grid' or 'Hostel'.

It also makes it obvious that my work has a humorist and ironic side. I like to mix, sample and quote artist throughout art history in a commonly postmodern manner, but always with a playful wink of the eye.

Allyson Packer

Work

Statement

This is a photo of my hands. This is not the artwork.

I often use my hands to make things. Lately I have been trying to find a way to make something that has to do with transmission. Not just the transmission of a virus, but the way information and ideas are transmitted from one place to another. I like possibility that something could be made in one location, dematerialized, and then rematerialized in another location. Think of a radio program. The host’s voice is at the radio station, then it is transmitted silently over radio waves, and rematerializes in your home when you turn on your radio. During this time when I’m not leaving my home, I want to believe it’s possible that I could make something that could manifest somewhere far away from me.

What I propose is that you and I make something together in this fashion. You and I will have a conversation over the phone, transmitting our voices to one another. You will tell me about where you are staying and what you are doing to occupy your time. I will take this information and then send you directions for a simple action you will perform in your home. You will document this action and send a copy of the documentation back to me. This is the artwork.

You and I will co-own this artwork. If it’s ever shown, you and I will have to agree on it.

Did you know that Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter invented something called the photophone, which allowed them to transmit their voices on a beam of light? They held the patent for it together.

Relationships are forged through powerful shared experiences. I imagine you and I may be having parallel experiences right now, doing things from home that we would usually be doing out in the world. This is a way we can share something, even though we are not together. This will be a small space in each other’s lives that we will continue to hold with the artwork as a marker.

Ben Peterson

Works

Video Statement

Statement

The studio serves as a nexus for catharsis, experimentation, and play. Using clay, ceramic, foam, wire, wood, fabric, and paint, I build sculptures and installations that serve as props and sets for performances. These activities are developed and documented through photography and video, exploring the intersections of sculpture, performance, and digital technology. Following this process, I edit the archive of images and objects into finished sculptures, photographs, videos, and short films.

Conceptually, clay and ceramic objects often reflect a purposeful restraint of the scatological nature of the material, projecting conservative values onto the materials and objects themselves. These objects function as “good aesthetic citizens,” representing status quo tastes of austerity, elegance, and purity. In this sense, the mass cultural production of objects polices our homes and architecture, constructing institutions and environments that repress self-expression, individuality, ugliness, and the impure.

My conceptual process deploys criticality and humor to ameliorate negative memories of bullying, anxiety, self-loathing, and conflicted identities through a cheerful degeneracy of masculine tropes. I grew up in a conservative small harbor town on Lake Michigan. By making artwork that associates clay and the ceramic with sensuality, sexuality, and transgression, I am building a nuanced critique of a eld of institutionalized tastes – pushing back against cultural and aesthetics values that I find representative of oppression.

Sigmar polke

Works

Bailey Romaine

Works

Statement

This piece, titled En-, is part of an ongoing series of paper works called Notations and Identifications. I think of this series as marginalia to my sculptural practice. These pieces are a chance to locate and visually designate some of the formal, material, and color relationships I'm thinking through, but that may be somewhat tangential to my other work.

With my sculptures I often work with the cast off fragments of building sites, and with these paper works I fold in the detritus of desk drawers. This came in part from my time working in libraries, appreciating the materiality of things like manilla folders, paper clips, staples, and laser printed images.

This work in particular began with drawing the outline of a scrap from my studio, translating the scrap into the schematic space of a blueprint. Blueprints imply not only a shift from two dimensional to three dimensional space but also a scale shift, that what is rendered on paper is something that may eventually exist at full scale. I love the speculative shift that happens when the haphazard shapes of studio offcuts are projected into this imagined spatial and scalar shift.

For me, making these works is a playful, meditative exercise in close looking. It's a process of sifting through the noise to find a moment of singularity.

Nadja Schütt

Works

„Clown“ 2009, 1.30 min, Videoloop, Edition of 3, EUR 1.400

„Zirkus“ 2010, 10 min, Videoloop, Edition of 3, EUR 1.400

Video Statement

pujan shakupa

Works

Statement

The main motivation of my photographic work is to capture an atmospheric (intimate) moment as the documentation of a special geographic or urban space. It is this particular environment that makes it difficult to come to terms with. An environment that confronts both the viewer of the photo and those in the area themselves with the irritating feeling of alienation. There are surreal worlds, "non-places" that tell of the human movement in city and nature landscapes. The photographs found assemblages, man-made breakdowns in which they linger for a moment. I try to capture the staging in reality.

Megan Stroech

Works

Video Statement

Statement

Megan Stroech utilizes fabric cut outs and collaged found materials to explore dichotomies between realness and artificiality, image and object, and common vs. luxury through references from domesticity, still life and the body. Decorative prints of fruits, florals and faux surfaces interact with paint and large swaths of felt along with other craft materials, creating arrangements that at once seem familiar and foreign to the viewer. In these recent works, screen printed fabrics are used to obscure, reveal and complicate specific areas of each piece. Forms in the work are often abstracted from home interior how-to books such as guides to house plant care, DIY window coverings and other traditionally feminine domestic pursuits. Ginghams, plaids and veins of marble are applied to felt and canvas, referencing patterns from domestic upholstery, surfaces and objects. Stroech’s work pulls these elements together in order to investigate the constant shifting of roles we takes on in the home as well as our relationship to the idea home and domestic space itself. Thinking about overarching themes of presentation and performance within the home, these works playfully investigate larger systems of patriarchy, consumerism and class.

JEFFREY TEUTON

Works

Video Statement

Statement

I consider myself a storyteller. I employ shape, color, and spatial relationships as a vehicle to interpret the immense, the philosophical, the cognitive, and the mundane. Collected stories and images are processed and filtered until what remains are simple quietly poetic acts. What emerges is a retelling in an attempt to gain insight, analyze, and search for a deeper understanding of my role within and reactions to the contemporary experience.

Kathleen Vance

Works

Video Statement

Statement

I am an environmental artist that creates projects that connect people to local aspects of nature that are overlooked or under appreciated. I look for the ways in which nature can be brought back into the course of one’s daily life. My sculptures and installations are inspired by and incorporate live elements of nature to address our relationship to the environment. I consider the importance of land and water protections, and access to green spaces, utilizing these components directly in my creative process. -Kathleen Vance

Jennifer Vasher

Works

Video Statement

Statement

“We have to ask is there something wrong with society that is making us so pressurized that we cannot live in it without guarding ourselves against it”. John Lennon, 1970

“Man is a reasoning animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute”. Mark Twain

Contemporary America has become a politically propped, market-driven, drug-loving, petroleum-drenched society. We practice rituals of cleanliness ingrained by a cult of purity. Using industrial materials to mutate familiar forms, my work questions the environmental and social implications of commodified goodness.

Power Pumps and Super Sprays (Weapons of the Anthropocene), adopt the forms of scientific Pyrex flasks and pressure canisters whose spray nozzles and hand pumps have further been altered with unrealistically exaggerated 3D-printed attachments. The warped and stretched bodies of these objects, originally designed for domestic cleaning, food, and beauty products, drip in allusion to toxic petroleum in the colorful, pleasurable palette of common opioids. They are bizarrely animate, in their mutant pursuit of cleanliness and convenience.

Jessica Zeglin

Works

Video Statement

Statement

‘Silence is an open field’ engages with concepts of active silence and unheard plant-based language. This installation combines drawings of plant historical gestures with research notes, poetry, and plant olfactory language. Plants use airborne chemical and olfactory signals to communicate with themselves and others. These plant-based conversations surround us at all times and are brought into the gallery through the active presence of drylands grasses in this piece. The jasmine scent included in the installation represents jasmonic acid, a chemical signal that when perceived by plants acts as a catalyst for response and defense against herbivore attacks. This scent-based text speaks to active listening, response, and growth. Additionally, the grasses in the piece are engaged in active regrowth, having been unwillingly abandoned by the artist in the beginning stages of the quarantine. As they respond to tending and attention throughout the exhibition, they demonstrate a process of collaborative resilience despite challenging circumstances.

The piece ‘when the cells of my body would move with the wind’ pairs a seemingly inert log with an active looping soundscape of a tree creaking and shimmying in the wind. This piece reminds us that an object which may appear to be inert actually holds the history of and potential for action, and that slow processes of change constantly occur just under the threshold of our perceptual experience.

For inquiries please contact the gallery:

611 Loma Linda Pl SE
Albuquerque, NM 87108
USA

+1 (505) 321 28 19
abq@birds-richard.xyz