"Formal: A Dirty Word?" Exhibition
Like the Spice
This event has ended.
Like the outpouring of zombie cinema in recent years, formalism has been criticized for hovering between crass and unsophisticated, remaining impossibly flighty. Despite their outward simplicity, they both unveil uniquely visceral reactions and challenge the viewer’s understanding of humanity. Controversy has surrounded form since Plato’s discussion of its “inexplicable manner.” Clement Greenberg deduced formalism from Abstract Expressionism, the highest art of the 1960’s in his opinion, a self-contained aesthetic experience of this world but inimitable otherwise.
Formalism currently navigates through the minefields of an extremely commercialized scene. Structural language translates into repetition and single-mindedness, reducing Minimal work to unqualified low-art. Somehow formal work has been sacrificed, quarantined to summer homes in New Haven or doctor’s offices.
Media
Schedule
from November 19, 2010 to December 30, 2010
Opening Reception on 2010-11-19 from 18:30 to 21:30