“The Intelligence of Things 2013 Parsons MFA Fine Arts Thesis” Exhibition
The Kitchen
This event has ended.
The Intelligence of Things features twenty artists representing a wide range of artistic interests, media, and methods.
For a growing number of contemporary artists and thinkers, the ontology of objects has prompted new investigations and modes of making. Perhaps in reaction to the dominance of screens and images in our daily life, artistic practice has embraced the object-as-thing: estranged, powerful and physical. A like-minded investment in materiality can be observed among the 20 artists in this exhibition. The Intelligence of Things presents these artists’ practices, which attest to the importance of the object in contemporary life. In these works, spanning different aesthetics and mediums—painting, performance, photography, video, sculpture and installation—objects become ciphers for memory, desire and fantasy. Far from simple gestures, the things in these works articulate their place as icons and bodily analogs, and as protagonists in interiors, architectural spaces and the scope of history.
The exhibition privileges the role of the displayed objects over any overarching curatorial concept. As a title The Intelligence of Things both emphasizes this approach and illuminates these artworks’ powerful effect and affect. That is to say that following Kant’s purposeful purposelessness, these artworks upend our notions of a thing’s effect or intent, and each one has a particular character, demeanor, and accent—whether fierce or foppish. The Intelligence of Things brings together a group of works that resist clear categorization and do not adhere to rigid stylistic doctrines. The exhibition and the works therein, rather, critically explore how things and human subjects together produce meaning in the world.
Media
Schedule
from May 18, 2013 to May 25, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-05-17 from 18:00 to 20:00
Artist(s)
Maricruz Alarcón, Elysa D. Batista, Lauren Denitzio, Sarah Allen Eagen, John Furer, Brenda Goldstein, Bing Han, Grace Hong, Sara Jimenez, Lilian Kreutzberger, Wilson Parry, Pieter Paul Pothoven, Isaac Pool, Jessica Posner, G. Scott Raffield, Kaitlynn Redell, Christine Howard Sandoval, Chaney Lane Trotter, Michael Watson, Ilyn Wong