After Exit
SMART OBJECTS Landers presents After Exit, the second annual High Desert group exhibition, curated by Derek Paul Jack Boyle and Chadwick Gibson, featuring works by Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Corey Escoto, Ted Gahl, Albert E Grey, Lewis Hammond, Aaron Elvis Jupin, Sarah Kim, Naomi Nakazato, Tameka Jenean Norris, Paul Rouphail, Brandi Twilley, Anthony White, and Hiejin Yoo.
4.7 – 5.20
There are many variations of an exit. The concept of leaving can be pictured in numerous ways and informs the relationship to our personal surroundings.
These environments and the objects depicted take on a certain weight in our absence; artifacts resonate with meaning and in turn paint narratives. An exit is a statement; the things and places left behind embody a tacit impression of one’s character – a portrait.
The works in After Exit inhabit this psychological space. In Ted Gahl’s City, a sun recedes between two ominous skyscrapers, as if seen through a rearview mirror. With Tameka Jenean Norris’s Zerish, closed blue and green curtains herald notions of a dilapidated, abandoned home. And in Lewis Hammond’s painting a vanity mirror stands blank, void of a human reflection, evoking a hanging melancholy.
All of the works in the show conjure different interpretations of what it means to leave something behind; each piece is a testament to the emotional power of absence. We see what remains and imagine a story... what we see ourselves in.
