New Public Sites: Lexington Park Marion by Graham Coreil-Allen
Desperate Times reveals Baltimore artists’ responses to catastrophes and the anxiety provoked by an unknown future or perilous present. Curator and painter Jason Irla gathered this group, who all seem to share the sense that at any moment the world could spiral out of control—or fall into the grip of ominous forces. (Read Stephen Doolittle’s introduction essay to Desperate Times here.)
In New Public Sites: Lexington Park Marion, Graham Coreil-Allen explores decaying vistas actually viewed in the neighborhood that surrounds the exhibition. This installation features four enormous black-and-white digital prints hanging as if on a clothesline in the center of the gallery. These are all eerie views of nearby empty sites—a corner vacated by demolition; a lot overgrown by resilient weeds; a footpath carelessly repaired with a patch of asphalt; and an abandoned bus station, marred by weeds and graffiti, now blocked off by a chain link fence. This last image is inscribed: “The withered remains of a bygone threshold.” When I first came to Baltimore in 1998, I met a friend at this then-active terminal. How quickly the present becomes “bygone.”
By Darrell Appelzoller
Darrell Appelzoller tackles the feeling of human isolation that troubles so many of us. His ambitious installation presents three-dimensional islands, each one a topographical photograph. First, you see the multiple islands and feel an urge to fit each one to another to create a huge puzzle of the Earth. But then, as you look longer and more closely, you discover on these islands individual figures and settings—the fleeting view of a head or a body or a hand, a person only fleetingly known or understood.
Reflexivity and Honest Assessment by Matthew Fishel
In his installation Reflexivity and Honest Assessment, accomplished filmmaker Matthew Fishel presents an animation of a single rotating flower beside two black-and-grey painted abstractions leaning against the wall. Matthew asks us to consider whether these abstractions (which look to me as a skyscraper and a boulder) and his animation are real or artificial. In fact, he tells us, the experience is real, in the sense that we are affected by the image, regardless of its substance.
Sarah McNeil’s work-in-progress, Bricoleur Dream Brigades Air Refinery, examines another boundary between the real and the imaginary—our dreams as they are invaded by mundane information from the waking world. BDBAR, of which Sarah is currently the only active member, “protects the sanctity of the dream state from the corrosive thoughts of everydayness.” In her richly layered installation, she develops an entire organizational structure for the group, documents possible expert collaborators, and maps BDBAR’s interventions.
Sarah also crafts machines that preserve our dreams by sucking unfavorable information from the air or by allowing us to turn up dials to achieve “memory consolidation” or “external stimulation integration.”
BHBITB, the mysterious brainchild of Joshua Haycraft, takes us to an even more futuristic world of machines, where every aspect of our bland lives will be categorized and controlled. After viewing an elegant wall of graphic panels, photographs, and videos that chronicle our rigid world-to-come, we are invited to take a pin and a membership card for BHBIBT. What is this acronym about anyway? Do I want to join? Do I have a choice?
BHBITB by Joshua Haycraft
On my recent visit to Desperate Times, I asked Jason, the exhibition Curator, about the surge of artist-curated and hosted exhibitions blossoming all over the City. He replied: “You know what you want, why not just do it?” We should be grateful that these artists all did!
Desperate Times is open by appointment at the Sub-Basement Artist Studios through Friday, October 8. If you miss this exhibition, catch the opening reception of Hope Against Hope on October 8 from 6 to 10 p.m., with a live performance by Laure Drogoul, Dustin Wong, and H. Honne Wells at the Phoenix Shot Tower.
Filed in: Sub-Basement Artist Studios.
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 