RJP Nomadic Gallery presents
Dark Matter
Exhibition Opening/Performance on First Friday, September 7th, 7-9 p.m.
Blue Star Contemporary, 116 Blue Star, San Antonio, TX
Blue Star Contemporary and the Lullwood Group present Dark Matter, an exhibition and performance by the RJP Nomadic Gallery. Arriving in a 40’ Ryder moving truck a performance of transformation will ensue as functionally designed shipping crates and palettes within the truck will be transformed into the walls, lighting and stairs of a mobile gallery. Upon entering the gallery visitors will find a series of works by highly accomplished international artists, some revealing the typically invisible process of art shipping and installation while others highlight the tangential influence of art handling and museum practices upon their finalized works. Beginning in the Blue Star Complex parking lot at 7 PM on Friday, September 7th the venue will close at 9 PM.
Based, in part, on the texts of Gregory Sholette reflecting the plight of the art world’s hidden 99% supporting the top 1%, the show promises to entangle grass-roots efforts, functional design as philosophy, and the impact of art market labor on aesthetic influence. The exhibit, in the context of the nomadic gallery transformation, displays design methodology as a social, philosophical approach by allowing new contentions and reversing the standard gallery notion of obfuscating process. Artists participating in the Dark Matter include Paul Villinski (NYC, NY), Alejandro Almanza Pereda (NYC, NY), Suguru Hiraide (Wichita Falls, TX), David Johnson (St. Louis, MO), Jordan Wayne Long (Boston), Nathan Porterfield (Fort Worth) and William Cannings (Lubbock, TX).
“After absorbing all the questions, the vehicle became the explosive implosion of the problem… Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised, because that is what design is, or what design should be. It’s not just something useful, nor is it just an image with certain associations. It is also an event – a social experiment, which is also a philosophical experiment, it is something that disrupts reality. It creates questions with no answers, but is suddenly more real than something written, for example, because of our complex relation to objects. They always seem to be more disturbing is their merciless, naked presence. The vehicle is both there and not there; it is sculpture and not sculpture. It is a object and an idea at all times, which is the most fascinating and insoluble part of its reception ” ~An Interview by Bruce W. Ferguson (1991), Critical vehicles : writings, projects, interviews / Krzysztof Wodiczko. 1999
* This event has been funded through a Kickstarter campaign developed byLullwood Group and Blue Star Contemporary.
(Curated by Ryder Richards)