Spliced Connector Spring 2021 Exhibition: Echolocations
May 21 – September 23, 2021
| Organized by Karen Fitzgerald | Curated by Dudley Zopp | Hosted by SHIM Art Network
Press Release
“First True Leaves” - my piece which is featured in the Echolocations show
“Bats send high frequency sound pulses, then listen to the echoes, to determine the size and shape of objects in their environment. This process, echolocation, is common to many life forms, including dolphins and humans. It’s fundamental to artists as they home in on the distance, size, and texture of their chosen subject. Responses come in colors, sounds, sensations of taste and smell; they arrive from the natural world or the urban landscape. Echolocation is a physiological process, one in which an artist engages all six senses in an effort to identify his/her subject, to find a form that articulates and transmits information to the world around them.
Organizing the information that bounces back to her, an artist asks not only what or whom she is listening to, but also how that information fits into the larger whole of contemporary and historical art. An artist’s work, written or painted or photographed or performed, echoes experienced vibrations that become new things that generate their own vibrations and echoes, and so become part of the hum of the universe.
The artists in this exhibition explore the physical properties of their materials. What is the role of plastic as both medium and cultural statement? How do the multiple frames of focus in collage combine images to establish new narratives? Materials have a specificity: paint or thread may mimic order and entropy in the natural world. An image maps a domestic situation. Text and image combine to drive home a point.
“First True Leaves” under UV blacklight exposure
An artist’s signals may hit something solid and return descriptive information. Or, the signals may pass through solid objects into other worlds, so that the information is returned transmuted, strange, compellingly beautiful or radically unsettling. These artists, multi-generational, and with varying practices and ways of engaging with the worlds they inhabit, show us that within the undercurrents of their work, cross-currents flow outward, in repeated patterns, finding echoes and responses in the hearts and minds of viewers.”
-Dudley Zopp, Curator
SHIM Art Network is an art exhibition company that fills the gaps in the art world, providing exhibition opportunities to artists, curators, galleries, universities, and other organizations and affiliations with exhibition space for their projects on- and off-line.