Curating in the Continuous Present: A Rehearsal For Gertrude Stein's Objects Lie on a Table

So Thank Every One and Let's Begin Faintly (Objects Lie on a Table, 105)

Sometimes, artists responded to other artists’ propositions with new works—a methodology that continues throughout the exhibition duration, for instance through Terrarea’s constantly shifting still lives that navigate the space and respond to other works in proximity. Artists likewise devised work that could engage in the continuous present of the exhibition’s shifting “stage set,” harnessing the potential of movement and time in arranging meaning. Borsato’s Arrangements (based on the artist’s engagement with the modern school of Sogetsu Ikebana) are composed in the exhibition (at various, unannounced times throughout), which alter its spatial and temporal composition by introducing living elements (flowers, plants, etc.), each with their own “time-sense.” DeFreitas’ and now to begin as if to begin begin of beginning again and again and again (in the continuous present with Gertrude Stein), 2016, attends to the changing composition of the exhibition itself by writing through the arrangements that are busily being made to change—a record of sorts. DeFreitas’ writing also explores the implications of Stein’s compositional experiment with new (language-based) arrangements of her own. Before the show began, DeFreitas scrutinized passages from Stein’s play, producing a series of texts that question the system of equivalences Stein seems to order up through her play: those between the objects and the Negros and the Chinamen, for example. Arrangements are political and compositions are meant to change.

Furthermore, Borsato’s Arrangements later make other arrangements: Terrarea are welcome to intervene or take apart her arrangements and incorporate Borsato’s component parts into their own, always-shifting “still lives” that move about the gallery space. Objects also have agency. Made in the exhibition, Liddington’s new sculptural work, Weighted dancers under spotlight (I realized the most sincere means of capturing their movement was to allow the clay to bend as it had wanted to, then and always), 2016 undergoes a series of changes through the ongoing drying of the clay, which continually alters its form over time. Already arranged compositions also leave the gallery space to occupy other positions in the “house,” as in DeFreitas’ “migratory Mary’s,” (if you look closely she moves), 2016, found, at times, in the Hart House Chapel, or just outside the gallery doors, en route.

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