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Some Kind of Halfway Place
curated by Joshua Citarella at Higher Pictures in New York, Dec 15 - Jan 19, 2018 works by Eleanor Antin, Aria Dean, Joao Enxuto and Erica Love, Felicity Hammond, Daniel Keller, Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Annika Kulhmann, Eva and Franco Mattes, Wyatt Niehaus, Joseph Strick, Lu Yang and UV Production House Some Kind of Halfway Place explores our current political landscapes, as rampant privatization has brought about an age of collapsing empire and withering state power. The exhibition takes its title from an episode of the short-run BBC science fiction series "Sapphire and Steel". In it, the characters find themselves at a highway rest stop-- or as the English would call it, a "halway place"--in which time has ceased to exist. Visions of the past merge with the present. They do not know why or how they arrived. They only know they cannot leave. The artists in this exhibition investigate a process of cultural and aesthetic stagnation, during which we struggle for social progress under the tremendous power accumulated by global capital in the neoliberal period. It feels as if the future isn't what it used to be and is grinding to a halt. In our moment, there seem to be no possible alternative ways of organizing society. We occupy "the non-place," an ever-perpetuated present, beyond which we cannot see or imagine. Has the future been cancelled? Or is it foreclosed? These artists attempt to peek behind that curtain and plot a new course out of our current position. | |
