MICROLOGIES EXHIBITION CURATORIAL STATEMENT
“From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.”
― Richard Siken
“To taste the sea, all one needs is one gulp.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
MICROLOGIES is a research project that compiles a series of group exhibitions, presentations, workshops and writings that revolve around the aesthetics of small-scale, micro materiality poetics and minimum gesture politics. This project proposes to explore the potential of minimum events and small gestures to open up spaces of philosophical discernment in relation to large scale, structures, patterns, events and paradigms.
The eclectic group of contemporary artists in these exhibitions have been invited to take the challenge of creating a very small but nevertheless significant piece, which is no bigger than 2 1/4" (5.7 cm) on each side, the exact measurements of a standard Rubik's Cube. The cube is used here as a measurement unit since it serves as an analogy of a small object that allows, through a relational game, for playful reconsiderations of spatial relationships. The character of this exhibition is interdisciplinary. Only two rules were given to the artists: (1) the projects proposed must be no larger than the maximum proposed size, and (2) the projects should not be scaled-down models of larger works but pieces that are meant to exist and display their full potential in this particularly small scale. Scale takes a key role in any aesthetic experience.
Art writer Eli Anapur stated, “As humans put themselves in the center of the visible world, as masters of the living environments, artworks are measured regarding proportion relative to generalized human scale. They became defined as large, life-size, miniature, or even enormous. The scale is thus something that is habitually examined, and is often an important factor in defining the meaning and significance of each work, particularly in contemporary art...”(1). Therefore, scale is ultimately a radical instigator of awareness in our relationship to the world around us. It is a relational and symbiotical concept that puts in dialogue two spatial realities, with the size of one object in relation to another becoming a major factor in developing our sense of place, sense of self, sense of otherness and sense of overall reality.
The scale relationship that is being examined in this exhibition is the one in which the aesthetic negotiation occurs between “a lilliputian object and a Man-mountain” (2): the one that establishes the intimate encounter between a giant, god-eyed voyeur-like observer (3) and a very small object of scrutiny, an art work, which displays fragility, smallness, and finiteness in relation to its observer and the surrounding architectural ecosystem. MICROLOGIES aims to explore the potential of this “extremed” reception relationship to embed the everyday experience with extra conceptual intimacy and introspective weight experimenting with its capacity to enhance our body and place awareness and steer our stable state of “subjective spatial affairs.”
Considering awareness and its holistic implications, paradoxically, perhaps this extreme focus on the “small finite” could be noticed, which may provide a direct path to connecting with the “vast infinite.” As it was pointed out by artist, curator and social activist Lanfranco Aceti, “Smallness, in the context of today’s big data, expanded digital worlds and representations of infinite global riches or tragedies, becomes a reflection of the role of humanity and human beings in a universe in constant expansion: where everything becomes larger than life. Cosmic infinity, trillions of dollars, billions of people do not provide the mind with comprehensible numbers in a mediated society that increasingly seeks the larger, the gigantic, the bigger to achieve awe and perceive immensity”(4). MICROLOGIES proposes to open up a space to explore the potential of minimum events and the implications of small gestures in relation to macro events and paradigms. This project evaluates the possibilities for philosophical discernment that unfolds when we put in dialogue the “intimate, self-reflexive and profound” in juxtaposition to the grandiose, spectacular and universal” (5). Ultimately, this exhibition is born out of the promise of a reward, a reward as spoken by actress Liz Vassey, “Notice the small things. The rewards are inversely proportional.”
(1) “How Scale in Art Influences the Viewing Experience,” Eli Anapur.
(2) “Gulliver's Travels,” Jonathan Swift.
(3) “8 Artists Are Making Impossibly Small Work,” Joe Fig interview on ARTSY.
(4), (5) “The aesthetics of scale,” Lanfranco Aceti Inc.
“From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.”
― Richard Siken
“To taste the sea, all one needs is one gulp.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
MICROLOGIES is a research project that compiles a series of group exhibitions, presentations, workshops and writings that revolve around the aesthetics of small-scale, micro materiality poetics and minimum gesture politics. This project proposes to explore the potential of minimum events and small gestures to open up spaces of philosophical discernment in relation to large scale, structures, patterns, events and paradigms.
The eclectic group of contemporary artists in these exhibitions have been invited to take the challenge of creating a very small but nevertheless significant piece, which is no bigger than 2 1/4" (5.7 cm) on each side, the exact measurements of a standard Rubik's Cube. The cube is used here as a measurement unit since it serves as an analogy of a small object that allows, through a relational game, for playful reconsiderations of spatial relationships. The character of this exhibition is interdisciplinary. Only two rules were given to the artists: (1) the projects proposed must be no larger than the maximum proposed size, and (2) the projects should not be scaled-down models of larger works but pieces that are meant to exist and display their full potential in this particularly small scale. Scale takes a key role in any aesthetic experience.
Art writer Eli Anapur stated, “As humans put themselves in the center of the visible world, as masters of the living environments, artworks are measured regarding proportion relative to generalized human scale. They became defined as large, life-size, miniature, or even enormous. The scale is thus something that is habitually examined, and is often an important factor in defining the meaning and significance of each work, particularly in contemporary art...”(1). Therefore, scale is ultimately a radical instigator of awareness in our relationship to the world around us. It is a relational and symbiotical concept that puts in dialogue two spatial realities, with the size of one object in relation to another becoming a major factor in developing our sense of place, sense of self, sense of otherness and sense of overall reality.
The scale relationship that is being examined in this exhibition is the one in which the aesthetic negotiation occurs between “a lilliputian object and a Man-mountain” (2): the one that establishes the intimate encounter between a giant, god-eyed voyeur-like observer (3) and a very small object of scrutiny, an art work, which displays fragility, smallness, and finiteness in relation to its observer and the surrounding architectural ecosystem. MICROLOGIES aims to explore the potential of this “extremed” reception relationship to embed the everyday experience with extra conceptual intimacy and introspective weight experimenting with its capacity to enhance our body and place awareness and steer our stable state of “subjective spatial affairs.”
Considering awareness and its holistic implications, paradoxically, perhaps this extreme focus on the “small finite” could be noticed, which may provide a direct path to connecting with the “vast infinite.” As it was pointed out by artist, curator and social activist Lanfranco Aceti, “Smallness, in the context of today’s big data, expanded digital worlds and representations of infinite global riches or tragedies, becomes a reflection of the role of humanity and human beings in a universe in constant expansion: where everything becomes larger than life. Cosmic infinity, trillions of dollars, billions of people do not provide the mind with comprehensible numbers in a mediated society that increasingly seeks the larger, the gigantic, the bigger to achieve awe and perceive immensity”(4). MICROLOGIES proposes to open up a space to explore the potential of minimum events and the implications of small gestures in relation to macro events and paradigms. This project evaluates the possibilities for philosophical discernment that unfolds when we put in dialogue the “intimate, self-reflexive and profound” in juxtaposition to the grandiose, spectacular and universal” (5). Ultimately, this exhibition is born out of the promise of a reward, a reward as spoken by actress Liz Vassey, “Notice the small things. The rewards are inversely proportional.”
(1) “How Scale in Art Influences the Viewing Experience,” Eli Anapur.
(2) “Gulliver's Travels,” Jonathan Swift.
(3) “8 Artists Are Making Impossibly Small Work,” Joe Fig interview on ARTSY.
(4), (5) “The aesthetics of scale,” Lanfranco Aceti Inc.