NYAB Event - “Circumstances: Selections from the Kentler Flatfiles” Exhibition

“Circumstances: Selections from the Kentler Flatfiles” Exhibition

Kentler International Drawing Space

This event has ended.

Kentler International Drawing Space presents Circumstances: Selections from the Kentler Flatfiles, curated by Holly Shen Chaves and Rachel Nackman.

The 32 artists featured in Circumstances were selected from the Kentler Flatfiles using a chance-based process inspired by John Cage’s seminal employment of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese oracular text. When making selections from the Flatfiles, curators Holly Shen Chaves and Rachel Nackman took procedural cues from Cage in consulting the I Ching as a guide. Their rejection of curatorial responsibility in favor of a predetermined system allowed the curators to discover, explore, and accept their selections with open objectivity.

A chance-based process presented a means both to experience the deliberate impartiality of the Cagean method and to highlight the remarkable diversity of works on paper contained in the Kentler Flatfiles, a repository of artwork by over 200 artists. The result of this process is a fascinating exhibition of 43 drawings, prints and artist’s books by 32 artists. Their fated works bear striking relationships to one another as well as to the concepts of chance and experimentation.

The curators’ working documents and charts are on display in the gallery along with further description of their process. A brochure with a critical essay by Holly Shen Chaves and Rachel Nackman also accompanies the exhibition.

Media

• Drawing

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