ABOUT

(a mail from the curator)

Alex

Here is what I am working with.....I don’t want to sound like an ass but i also don’t want to sound heavy and fucking academic 

When Did You Explode?

Visuals in Conversation

Right when I was asked to curate this exhibition I remember reading an interview with Liz Phair where she was asked the question "when did you explode?" I found it terribly funny as an interview question and as a kind of bizarre one liner. I jotted it down and figured it would make a good title for something. Which leads us here. 

It got me thinking about interviews and conversations as tools for reconsidering and gaining new perspective and understanding. It sparked this idea to curate the exhibition around conversations between works. In the exhibition each artists work is paired with a work of my own. In some cases it is work from my catalog and with others I have created new pieces. Some of the artists were new to me and others are those I have worked with or live with their pieces in my home. This is me playing around to see what dialogue emerges through a curation and installation that pushes visuals into conversation. I certainly don't want to come across as too cavalier or disrespectful in saying that this is all just a bit of fun. I just find exhibition text to often be terribly boring and even harder for me to write. Simply put - these are works in conversation. 

OH! Also, it turns out I remembered it wrong - which is very me thing to do. It was actually "how did you explode?"

For reference, here is the excerpt from the Vulture interview with Liz Phair. Seemed kind of fitting to include. . 

How did you explode?

"I stopped going to class in my senior year of high school.At New Trier High School. Phair was raised in an upper-middle-class household in Winnetka, a Chicago suburb. I’d been an almost straight-A student. I remember being in geometry class, and I kept getting 100s. They graded on a curve, and a guy I had a crush on, who I thought liked me, wasn’t doing so well in class. He turned around one time and looked at me with such resentment. He hated my guts.

I felt like there was not going to be a payoff for being a good girl, or being smart, or going to an Ivy League school. I remember thinking, Fuck it, I’m done with this"