Jan Baracz "How to Float Above the Psychic Stampede and Other Traditional Remedies"
Stephan Stoyanov Gallery
This event has ended.
A wave of plastic flotsam swells dangerously over the reception desk. Jungle tree frogs call out over a rave bass beat sending ripples over the surface of a pond. The chorus of nearly extinct voices echoes in a space portentously bracketed by monolithic satellite dishes. The metallic mesh bowl of each dish is woven with tiers of silky thread in mandala-like patterns; a compulsively linear attempt to record a long lost signal, webs of dreams spun within bleakly indifferent communication devices.
It’s official. On a terminally ill planet, in the face of irreversible damage and in the absence of any larger vision that could suggest the possibility of either social justice or common good, a wave of panic has begun to mount. Shedding a thin layer of civility, an inadmissible, secretly harbored nihilism raises its head. The specter of a crawling, slow-motion apocalypse takes on tangible form. Irresolvable global resource conflicts cast long shadows over contemporary societies precipitating the long suppressed realization that an ultimate war between individual beings has erupted. Street-corner doomsayers have their day. Courtesy of the gratification industry, individual links and larger social fabrics are shredded under a pressure of freshly nurtured desires. Mortal fear and savage hostilities ripple through metropolitan crowds. The psychic stampede has begun!
Will an omphalos carved into a stone, a center of gravity that hopes to hold, summon a grounding force?
[Image: Jan Baracz "FOSSILIZED SIGNAL #2" (2010) aluminum mesh satellite dish, synthetic thread, 72 x 72 x 16 in.]
Media
Schedule
from October 17, 2010 to November 14, 2010
Opening Reception on 2010-10-17 from 18:00 to 21:00