Circle Contemporary
Chicago, IL
June 1–July 20, 2018
“I was looking at all of the things and trying to notice connections between them. Why this table, why now? Why these things and not others?”
-Alexandra Kleeman, Fairy Tale
To remember several things at once, turn each into an object and visualize arranging it carefully around an interior of your choosing. This is your memory palace. Anytime you need to recall an item, wander back through the palace. It should be right where you left it: information in a mental blueprint. But you might find that things congeal strangely in the set design of the mind. Coordinates warp and contract, matter changes properties, references dissolve.
This exhibition presents subconscious architectures and objects at the edge of familiarity. Inverted, fragmented, or at an odd angle, these works free us to forget the slick surfaces of easy identification, utility, or commodification. Turned over like tumbled rocks, their woozy edges expose what’s underneath: from the interior décor of dreams to the pure forms hiding inside the scraps of consumer culture.
Artists include Elana Adler, Guy Conners, Lindsey Dorr-Niro, Óscar I. González Díaz, Thomas Kong, Alysha Kostelny, and Sara Ludy.
