SQUARED

The Ernest Rubinstein Gallery at The Educational Alliance

197 East Broadway at Jefferson Street, New York

December 6, 2006 – January 11, 2007

Peter Barrett, Caroline Burton, Jeff Feld
Danielle Mysliwiec, Keiko Narahashi
Mary Ann Strandell, Bradley Wester, John Zinsser

PETER BARRETT

SQUARED engages the cultural significance of the right angle, a supposition of orderliness and authority in all matters intuitive. The artists participating in this exhibition have taken it upon themselves to confront the quality of disinterested hegemony which right-angled forms represent. In some cases, they have attended to the interior area of the square, producing labyrinths, while others have found inspiration in replicating the silhouette of this primary form in quantum varieties and progressions; others still have applied their interest to the visual form of the grid, in which minimal forms intersect with utility and coalesce in each segment with a degree of infinite perception, as if they were measurements of time rather than space. The artist’s role as an interlocutor of cultural aims is made tangent to the compartmentalized mentality of a businesslike society, achingly sensible and orderly yet inherently obsessive. The square forms that inhabit these art works relate to the mathematical syustems responsible for architecture, the internet, and methods of government structure and social control. They are both a fulcrum and a vortex, guarding against mystery while providing it as well.

CAROLINE BURTON


JEFF FELD


DANIELLE MYSLIWIEC


KEIKO NARAHASHI

MARY ANN STRANDELL

BRADLEY WESTER

JOHN ZINSSER