fac•sim•i•le
on view from 10 September - 29 October 2016
Room 83 Spring
“The great deception is the belief that things have a continued and fixed essence, the mindset that ignores the impermanence and the continuous transformation of phenomena.”
The works in this show are artful facsimiles of things in the world. John Anderson assembles camera look-alikes from found wood and a shopping cart from sticks. Venetia Dale amasses a pile of rubber door stops, in clay. Judy Haberl casts handbags and their contents in transparent silicone. Brian Bishop paints enlargements of old photos he finds abroad, and Pier Gustafson creates what gives the illusion of heavy machinery from paper and ink.
Some objects like erasers, purses, or a random black and white photo may be so mundane as to go unnoticed in our daily life. In some cases the original object seems so insignificant that the artist simply replicates the essential parts, creating the appearance of something we know. In each case the viewer is manipulated into seeing something familiar for the first time.
Building an image or object from rescued objects or recycled materials is central to the time-honored technique of collage and assemblage. There is cultural DNA in all of this found material, which can lead to new combinations, causing overlooked parts of our culture to become visible through the facsimile.
The deception is magical and can elicit a childlike amazement at the world around us. But there can be deeper strategies at work in creating objects that upend our normal expectations and assumptions leading us into a state of not knowing, which helps us to be totally present.