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Check
October 10th, 2014In light of Voting Week, Postcrypt Art Gallery and the members of Civic Engagement present a call to artists for the upcoming show, Check.
For the past year, students and members of Civic Engagement have been planning a week-long series of events from October 6th to the 10th entitled “Voting Week.” The week will focus on the importance of voting, pertinent dialogues in politics, voting in other nations, and running for public office among other topics. It will feature guest speakers Rhode Island Governor Chaffe and former Prime Minister of Kurdistan Barham Salih.
As the closing event of Voting Week, Postcrypt Art Gallery will host Check, an art show questioning the relationship between art and politics. Noted conceptual artist Bruce Nauman suggests, “art can never have direct political and social impact on culture” but rather it serves as an indirect impetus that is “certainly real.” Tracing back to the historical usage of art as propaganda, Check investigates art as a catalytic object. Check is an opportunity for artists to express their own political beliefs, whether through criticism, support, or the daunting confusion of not knowing what those beliefs even are. We invite the politically active and lukewarm alike to an event rooted in personal context. Work of all mediums are accepted.
Check questions the relationship between art and politics. Tracing back to the historical usage of art as propaganda, Check investigates art as a catalytic object.
Through a fantasy election that shows candidates who have identical faces but are represented differently through names and slogans-the installation attempts to convey how the hopeful language of promised change to a society can feel arbitrary.
But of course what is offered by politicians is not always arbitrary or false; instead this distrust, in a sense, roots back to one's confusion in following politics-due to the over stimuli of information embedded in political discourses, such as but not limited to, propaganda and unnecessary slander. This can lead to one's doubt and hesitance in forming their own political stances.
Perhaps art cannot have a direct political and social impact on culture, but nonetheless we encourage the viewer to look past the absurdity that coats politics in real life-through this humorous and rather nonsensical experience.
Gallery
