Subsidence, 2022 - Robert Lehman Gallery, UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, NY
Subsidence is a natural phenomenon, often slowly occurring, where the ground beneath a structure sinks. Gradually, what was once stable and inert gives way to flux and uncertainty. In this grouping of works, subsidence is imagined as a kind of cognitive dissolution, perceiving effects without being conscious of causes. These objects and environments speculate about belief and mistrust, and wonder about invisible things, systems and processes, that operate in the background, slow and diffuse, the things that fail to capture our attention until it’s too late.
“It has been noticed that the proliferation of conspiracy theories, in different times and places, is linked to trust in fact-gathering institutions which have epistemic functions in human lives. In fact, many of the most recent studies heavily lean on the analysis of a philosopher and political theorist Fredric Jameson, who saw conspiracy theories as a mental inability to see how everything fits together in today’s society. In that light, in spite of their simplified nature and undisputedly harmful impact, they do contain a seed of imaginative potential, as a creative, mobilizing response to a ‘consensus reality’ that too often serves to the interests of the ones in power.”
- Zelkja Himbele (exhibition curator)
Two Points on a Curved Surface, 2022
This installation invites viewers to explore a space that appears to be a backwoods encampment or makeshift laboratory. The arrangement includes a personal sleeping pod that shields the user from electromagnetic waves (Faraday cage), hand cut camouflage utility tarp, and a grouping of devices that playfully approximate homemade optical experiments seeking to prove "flat-earth" theory. In exploring alternative worldviews and perceptual slippages, this project hopes to evoke the potential of both isolation and hyper-connectivity in cultivating delusional and speculative attitudes, bringing into contrast the recent upwelling of distrust in scientific institutions with the consistent human desire to strive toward the unknown.
The triangular platform in the center of the installation references the basic building block of Buckminster Fuller's 1943 Dymaxion Map projection, which sought to reduce distortions associated with representing the globe on a 2-dimensional plane, drawing comparisons between two competing visions of a “flat earth”.
Bellwether (interior view)
Exhibition documentation by Blaine Davis
