Medium Resistance

Deadline: Unspecified

Medium Resistance
Ice Box Project Space
Crane Arts Building
Philadelphia, PA
March 3 – April 4, 2010

Original post found here: http://philagrafika2010.lefora.com/2009/03/11/medium-resistance-an-exhibition-at-the-ice-box-pro/7422705/

Medium Resistance, an exhibition to be held at the Ice Box Project Space, Crane Arts Building, Philadelphia, in conjunction with Philagrafika 2010: The Graphic Unconscious. We are currently seeking suggestions for artists to be included in this exhibition. If you know an artist(s) you would like us to consider, please forward their name and contact information to:

Nicholas Kripal/Richard Hricko
Crane Arts Building
1400 N. American St.
Philadelphia, PA 19122
info@cranearts.com

Medium Resistance
Ice Box Project Space
March 3 – April 4, 2010


Recent discourse tends to force print and craft objects into not-so-recent, even outright conservative categories: as fine art, they must be autonomous, original, and auratic; as artisanship, they must rely on tactility, skill, and apprenticeship. In both instances, printmaking and crafts are defined in defensive opposition to the forces and effects of mass culture, reproducing an old-fashioned binary in which art and artisanship provide a substitute sphere of “authentic” creative experience rather than a critical engagement with cultural production at large.

The exhibition Medium Resistance features contemporary works of print and craft that resist such an either-or classification. Informed by historical avant-garde practices such as the Bauhaus and Constructivism, these works reassess the mediums’ expressive, communicative, and material possibilities to articulate experiences beyond known aesthetic, social, and political boundaries. Vessels and posters, digital images and books, to name just a few examples, straddle the lines between art, craft, and mass production, strategically exploring each format’s functionality and usefulness, its potential for participation and collaboration, communication and dissemination.
__________________
Caitlin Perkins
Philagrafika 2010
Program Manager
cperkins@philagrafika.org
215-701-6148