Flatlander, 2015
• Carlos Aires
• Jesse Amado
• Man Bartlett
• Matthew Chambers
• Rebecca DiDomenico
• Mark Hogensen
• Cisco Merel
• Jeanne Quinn
• Xochi Solis
• Penelope Umbrico
Ten artists explore how our compulsive relationship with the flat screen and the Internet has changed our view of the world.
Thousands of years prior to understanding the planet was round, humans believed the world was flat. Since then the world has turned through a succession of mechanical inventions including the combustion engine, air travel, and the computer chip. Today, our horizon line has been recast as the shortest distance between two computer-generated points. The ever-increasing speed of travel and communication has made virtual flatlanders of us all.
Entering into dialogue with our technologically connected world, many twenty-first century artists utilize the flat screen, imitate flat imagery, and appropriate cultural patterns from across the globe. However, flat does not mean equal and flat does not mean level. Flatlander presents ten artists who meander unique paths across this flat world of commerce and culture, using form, process, and metaphor to map our diversified experiences.
Guest curated by Patty Ortiz
EMANATE
Maps are flat renderings of Three Dimensional landscapes. They delineate countries, continents, states and bodies of water. They separate and unite simultaneously. We live in times where wars are fought between countries, over borders, over land and water rights, and yet we are all interconnected through the land, rivers and oceans that exist on our singular planet spinning in space. The world we inhabit is rendered in “Emanate” as ephemeral networks with intricate interconnections, similar to the veins inside our bodies. We live and breathe in the pathways, the journeys where our lives lead us. Some paths we traverse are intentional and some are misadventures or unintended. But all become part of our destinies, the forks we choose and those we leave behind. We weave backwards and forwards, creating our paths as we travel. We live in the gaps, in the interzones.
Here I have re-drawn the territories, so to speak. I have cut through layers of code to rearrange geography. The journeys are mysterious depictions through space. They are the true places; they carry our stories beyond existing boundaries. They move in the realm of the inner world, between experience and imagination, the world where the personal quest is perfectly crafted for each individual and also part of a greater universal migration.
ELEMENTAL SEWN DRAWINGS
These drawings represent the elements. The marks or lines are sewn on paper, illustrating the continuous nature of the “drawn” line. The process of creating the pieces is a vital element of the experience. Even the frames themselves become a part of the visual exploration. The holes in each frame emphasize the role of empty space in the illumination of each element.; the air necessary to create fire, the gaps between water currents and the intervals between breaths. The threads move beyond the frame into a world outside the designated frame, so that the art unites with the viewer’s perceived space.
Rebecca DiDomenico
2015
In these drawings, the drawn line is sewn with thread. I intentionally left the threads attached to the piece to reveal the process of sewing. The sewn lines are also continued outside the boundary of the frame. I am interested in the multifaceted nature of boundaries.
One needs boundaries to be able to create, and live. However, it is the way in which these boundaries are expanded beyond the visual realm that is suggestive of a true multidimensional reality. If the way we experience the world is limited by our preconceived notions of different realities, we shut the variety of responses down into a limited understanding.
In these pieces, the hole in the frame functions as a kind of escape clause— a way to visually move in and out of a set of visual experiences in front of us. Also, framing the empty space speaks to the importance of the void, the way in which emptiness or space or what is NOT there can help define what IS there. (Rebecca DiDomenico)
Rebecca DiDomenico’s stitched prints invite investigation with their complex and eccentric sense of nature. Organic forms emerge and thrive out of deep space with symbolic thread as their anchor. (Robischon Gallery ?) (Flourish, 2008)
