#Spaces Gallery

[longlistshort]

The images above are from Brianna Lynn Hernandez’s exhibition Anticipatory|Después, one of three currently on view at Spaces gallery in Cleveland. Her moving video and sculptural installations focus on themes of end-of-life-care, grief, and mourning.

From the gallery about the work-

Anticipatory|Después visualizes the anticipatory grief of caregiving and the process of dying through performative videos and photography. Each piece shares the physical and emotional state of the dying, the caregiver, and at times the two concurrently. Ranging from fast and aggressive dance-like movement to slow and meditative contemplation, the enacted scenes capture a range of emotions and thought processes of understanding and untangling the intertwined traumas of caregiving and acute grief.

As her mother’s caregiver in the final year of her life, Hernández translated her personal experience of grief into her studio practice in order to combat the isolation and shame many grievers face in our death-avoidant culture. Through several series including Anticipatory | Después, the works aim to normalize honest conversations of grief and act as an entry point into education on end-of-life planning. Hernandez states that while we will all eventually experience the pains of loss, preparing for the logistics of death and nurturing supportive communities for grievers can provide comfort and lessen the unnecessary stressors attached to loss.

A Botanical Conversation, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s exhibition, explores environmental, identity, and cultural issues using the natural world as a backdrop. The two large murals are of an enlarged palm tree cell as seen through a microscope.

The exhibition statement by curator Conor Moynihan-

The palm tree is a central component of Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s practice, a motif he has explored to highlight themes of exoticism, migration, and cultural heritage. Recently, Mehdi- Georges Lahlou has used the palm tree to explore themes of colonization, climate change, and history. While members of the Arecaceae family- palm trees- can be found in many parts of the world, they are not found here in Ohio. Unless, of course, you go to the Cleveland Botanical Garden as Mehdi-Georges Lahlou did for his residency at Spaces.

For A Botanical Conversation, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou has created four new video works using the Cleveland Botanical Garden as the setting and backdrop. While many of the plants visible in these works come from elsewhere across the world, his collaborators Diwe Augustin-Glave, CHIMI x Nature, and Dr Lady J are based in Cleveland. In many ways, this body of work imagines the conversations that might happen if the flora in the Cleveland Botanical Garden could speak, sing, chant, and educate, and then transports this dialogue in the gallery space.

Microscopy, the mural that extends over two walls in the gallery, serves a double function. Based on the cell of a dead palm tree, it enlarges from an unusual perspective a motif central to the exhibition. And it also serves as a container and a frame for the four videos. This conversation emerges within the boundaries of the palm tree cell, transporting this exhibition into the botanical garden.

Characteristic of his practice, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou draws our attention to how plants and botanical gardens become ways to highlight histories of colonization, compulsory heterosexuality, and climate disaster all contained under canopies of glass. Yet, especially through the performances of Diwe Augustin-Glave, CHIMI x Nature, and Dr Lady J, they also celebrate new queer ecologies and configurations, melding African and African American musical traditions, queer theory and scholarship, ecological history, and environmental justice towards new ends.

A Botanical Conversation is a cacophony. It asks us to listen carefully to hear all the voices that make up this chorus.

Aaron D. Williams has created a video installation, ESCAPING AAWFUL LAND, that continues the work created for his previous Aawful Friends exhibition. This new creation addresses the issue of anxiety and the power of collaboration as a way to combat it.

From the gallery-

ESCAPING AAWFUL LAND is an immersive exhibition that builds upon the success of Aaron D. William’s previous Aawful Friends showcase at Zygote Press. This new showcase explores the creative journey between Williams and collaborating artists. By delving into anxiety through art, we seek to acknowledge its profound impact on our collective well-being. We must address anxiety as a shared concern and foster a future community that supports and uplifts one another. Through individual and collective artistic expression, we can overcome the gravity of the situation and find healing and unity. In our fast-paced society, anxiety affects people from all walks of life, taking various forms and manifesting in relentless thoughts, paralyzing fear, and an overwhelming sense of unease. Despite its grip, we encourage you to embrace your inner courage and take the leap. The installation will be held at The Vault in SPACES gallery, where you will be transported to AAWFUL LAND – a hidden realm within our city accessible only to those who know it exists. Guided by the mysterious GUARDIAN, you will journey through its enigmatic mysteries. As you step into AAWFUL LAND, you will be captivated by a mesmerizing video presentation. Witness AAWFUL AARON engaged in a gripping game against a formidable opponent, reminding us that we have the inner strength to persevere and pursue our dreams even amidst anxiety. In Aawful Land, anxiety takes on tangible forms and bursts forth in vibrant colors. CREATURE is at the heart of our narrative, an overbearing shadowy figure personifying anxiety and serving as the central antagonist. Aawful Aaron is locked in a fierce battle against CREATURE, desperately seeking escape from this hidden world. However, a subtle hint suggests that Aaron may need assistance to overcome his challenges. Within Aawful Land, a group of trapped artists may hold the key to their collective liberation. Together, they offer a glimmer of hope, representing collaboration’s power in overcoming Aawful Land’s perils. This work serves as a proof-of-concept or work-in-progress, paving the way for Aawful Friends II. In the forthcoming installation, we will feature this newfound group of artists, showcasing their collective efforts and unveiling the transformative power of collaboration. Their shared experience demonstrates that collective creativity and expression can lead to freedom and transcendence. ANXIETY IS HARD – TAKE YOUR SHOT ANYWAY.

All three of these exhibitions close 3/1/24.

[bebs-art-gallery]

Moonchild by Santiago Caruso

[nekomori-art]

Passerby 💫

Sending best wishes to everyone for the new year!

[meowscarada]

what if jjk yaoi

[openingadoor]

Berlin, City Smell Research. Sissel Tolaas (Norwegian, born 1962) 2004.

Glass and smell simulation

Each bottle: 5 7/8 x 7 1/16 x 2 3/8" (15 x 18 x 6 cm)

“Smell immediately locates you in a space,” says artist, designer, chemist, and odor theorist Sissel Tolaas. “It gives you new tools to perceive your surroundings.” Throughout her career Tolaas has worked provocatively with smell, applying headspace technology—used in the perfume industry to capture and synthesize natural scents—to render essences ranging from the objectionable (sweat, rotten fish, dog feces) to the everyday (fresh laundry, kebabs, shoe shop) and put them into an archive of more than seven thousand scents. From this archive she has created fragrances that do not adhere to the usual definitions of what smells good or desirable; instead, her aim is to stimulate emotional responses, evoke memories, and recreate places in all their chaos and specificity. While conducting her City Smell Research, which was presented at the Berlin Biennale in 2004, Tolaasworked in various Berlin districts to distill an essential scent for each one, creating an olfactory map of the city. The scents are contained in bottles that physically recall the city map and compass points. This work is not simply the charting of a landscape of smell; it also explores the potential of smell as information that enhances and subverts the physical and symbolic boundaries of the urban ecosystem.

found via Talk to Me curated by Paola Antonelli

[keepingitneutral]

"Meridiano," Puerto Escondido, Mexico,

Courtesy of Tatsuro Miki & Axel Vervoordt

[tulipsofthemorning]

Josef Scharl, 1933, "Burning Stars"

Fletcher Sibthorp, 1967, "The Devotion"

[themultiverseofai]

Take in the view 🚀🌆

[iraprince]

shooting the shit (after getting shot to shit) comm for @plum-plum-plum-plum!!

[wiststudies]

42 / 100 days of productivity

5th november

☆ got chem marks ( passed with a 19/35 - still upset over it )

☆ bio revision class + physics class

☆ best friend got me cinnamon rolls to cheer me up

☆ studied for biology test

☆ barely drank water

☆ walked 4.5 K cuz my leg is still healing

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A gift horse for @piosplayhouse

[the-meme-monarch]

wow kris you sure are only taking a select few darkners back with you to castle town why’s that haha. why’s it so cold

[bebs-art-gallery]

© Polar Lamb

[galina]

Got a membership at the Royal Academy of Art this year and in an effort to use it more I've been working there at the members' cafe – I'll never be over this architecture in this courtyard on the way in

[emaadsidiki]

Fortresses Under Fire🎨 Keith Ferris🖌️ Thunderbirds🛩️

[hellenhighwater]

Have you taken any pottery classes or were you entirely self taught? I REALLY want to get into it but classes are quite expensive

I took some sculpting in undergrad, but it was in the context of casting and mold-making, not ceramics. So I'm fairly comfortable with clay as a medium but not so much with clay as an end product--not being able to do armatures and having to think about firing is weird. (If I had the opportunity to do bronze casting again, though, I would, no hesitation.) That puts me in the minority of my current pottery peers, who are largely self-taught or only learned in our studio.

I do pottery now at a co-op studio space, and technically that means that I'm taking classes there--but the classes are more like guided lab time? There's not really assignments or anything, and there's only a couple other people who sculpt, none of whom are in my class. Mostly the class just means that the person in charge demonstrates a technique or two once a week and then lets us do our thing.

Personally I think that shared studio space is the absolute best way to go. You spend less in startup costs (kilns are EXPENSIVE, running kilns is expensive, glaze is expensive) and it plugs you directly in to a group of fellow artists who can help and support you at whatever skill level you're at. Yes, classes are expensive--my class is $250 per season. But for me that includes lab space, 50 lbs of clay per season, almost all of the glaze I use, kiln time, and other people doing all the maintenance and kiln loading/unloading etc. Very much money well spent.

Artist-run shared spaces are often not turning a profit on anything with studio fees, just covering operations costs, so while it's pricey, it generally is just...what it costs to do that hobby. And it is sooooo much easier to be motivated when you're going to what is, basically, Grown-Up Art Club.

But if costs are prohibitive for you to do pottery via classes, and you want to learn to sculpt, then get some polymer clay and see what you can do. It's a different game than actual clay, but form is form, and the medium is secondary to figuring out how to translate an idea into reality.

Polymer clay is relatively affordable and doesn't require nearly the infrastructure of ceramics. If you can't spend the money on classes or a shared studio, then polymer clay is a great way to develop technique and an eye so that when you're in a position to spend the money, you already have the skills to make it worth what you're spending.