NYAB Event - Sean Kennedy & Chadwick Rantanen Exhibition

Sean Kennedy & Chadwick Rantanen Exhibition

UNTITLED

This event has ended.

The utilitarian function is really clear, yet retains a lot of aesthetic baggage. An organized system dictates how they are produced.
They mimic a structural element by engaging with the ceiling, which is usually a place of [exposed] structure: lights, ducts, etc…The ceiling is a place to quarantine character at a safe distance. The eye becomes the lens and the translation from object to image, or material to information, is an effect of this use of overhead space. They are adaptable and changeable but the fact is there really aren't many choices available and most are not subjective. It’s a structural necessity that looks like a choice. By being knowingly forced into this perspective, you're entering into an immersive experience—and this is partially dependent on height— that is somewhat disorienting.
It fabricates the extension of the plane, even though it's clearly a container of some type, like a corral or tray.
The indiscriminate quality of a container is what justifies using such disparate objects. Stuff can more or less just be dumped onto or into it and it has a leveling out, homogenizing effect.
They are plumb simply because that makes them less likely to fall.
The way the objects get arranged is determined by the apparent function of the surface on which they rest.
They needed to have an end, something that ruins the moment of visually exiting the room.
It utilizes the horizontality of the plane in service of something other than just a space for resting objects on.
A viewer literally tries to find a comfort zone… where is it comfortable to stand and look?
There’s something about improvising or problem solving that's pure and makes perfect sense; you have this thing, you need to make it work, this is a good way to do it, a lot of people do it. It’s a strange business decision to turn this solution into a product. A product that remains tied to its roots yet has relinquished the freedom of the initial improvisational gesture.
*They are quite varied in their relationship to organization.
It relates to some other two-dimensional system of image making and the idea of a photographic crop.
Some function as a kind of storage space and the arrangement is seemingly more oblivious to a potential viewer than those that appear as a kind of interface or a picture plane or something that's directed at the viewer.
There's still deliberation over the composition of the objects, even if it's made to look like there's not.
A painting made on the floor and then hung on a wall acquires a magical quality through the reorientation of marks. It’s very simple but this subtle, physical disorientation exists just because it has been rotated in space.
The structure came first so this was a way to relinquish the task of decoration, to use the supporting component as a guide for aestheticizing the central component.
There is something specific to being underneath the horizontal plane, as opposed to having it in front of you; it necessitates a different kind of language than a painting or a picture on the wall does.