Honoring the Dog-Legging Horizon
Carly Burnell, Heather McKenna, Jane Swavely, Jule Korneffel, Larry Wolhandler, Marjolein Knottenbelt, Nora Chellew, and Peter Brock
9 July – 3 September, 2021
Exhibition
Honoring the Dog-Legging Horizon
July 9 - September 3, 2021
Opening Friday, July 9, 4-8pm
“Attend to your configuration.” -Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott, 1884
Spencer Brownstone Gallery is pleased to present Honoring the Dog-Legging Horizon, a group show featuring paintings by Carly Burnell, Heather McKenna, Jane Swavely, Jule Korneffel, Larry Wolhandler, Marjolein Knottenbelt, Peter Brock, and a sculpture by Nora Chellew.
The paintings in this exhibition are hung low – approximately forty-eight inches to eye level, instead of the standard 57-60 inches. The benches were placed in the gallery to accommodate the body shift required to meet the paintings’ gaze. The benches are for sitting. The paintings are for seeing.
The intent behind the positioning of objects is a request to look closer and beyond the largest plane. The recognition of paintings below eye-level begs a question. And a closer examination for consideration calls for the gesture of leaning or bending the body.
These works possess pictorial depth, unique material qualities, resistance to immediate consumption, and an overall object-ness. The paintings are prisms, windows, water, ledges, screens, environments. The paintings have sides, weight, and a back. The materials had past lives. The artworks exist in our space-time and the space is not a vacuum.
We stage and produce our cultural output with unprecedented sophistication, but perhaps this effort undermines our ability to fully experience the presented objects. Perhaps there is a neglected space in the theater of art viewing, before the Stage and closer to the Audience, that can be activated by the smallest of movements.
The title of the exhibition is from Nora Chellew's work FERRETING TEMPERED TREASURES, a text based bench sculpture in the courtyard.