Erica Bailey “So Close”

Cuchifritos

This event has ended.

So close is a new project developed by Erica Bailey for Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space. The installation includes a miniature diorama of the LES Studio Program studios, where the artist was a resident from June 1 through September 14, 2018. The diorama is paired with found video, taken at the microscopic level, of bacteria decomposing animal cells and video the artist took in the LES studios of a dead mouse under the radiator, discovered while seeking unusual vantage points from which to shoot the space.

The diorama is the artist’s attempt to halt time, at once a denial of impermanence and a memento mori. It presents the studio emptied of both art and the implements of artmaking suggesting both the potential for creation and an anxiety akin to that which a writer feels when confronted with the blank page. The alternating acts of closing in on and pulling back that occur in the installation express a longing to get at, through the creative act, something elusive about our existence within various and bewildering scales of time and space.

Part four of the 5-part Workspace ’19 exhibition series, featuring new work by residents of AAI’s LES Studio Program