|
1:1 is an artist-run project space in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is the collaborative intersection of four artists: Leigha Mason, Jarrett Earnest, Whitney Vangrin, and Alex Sloane. 1:1 is a ratio that employs the infinite coexistence of Genesis and Chaos—it is not a neutrality nor a cancellation nor an equality. It is presence in action. Like a hellmouth yawning open in an unexpected and specific moment, 1:1 reserves the right to freely transmute its own form. We see 1:1 not only as a rupture in space, but also in time, as much a discursive juncture as a physical location. Made up of a sequence of exhibitions, events, statements and gestures, it is interested in tearing down the structures for exhibiting and distributing art not to install a new “institution,” but to ignite shifting forms and potential strategies for a renewed engagement with living. |
|
Courtesy of 1:1 Project Space.
1:1 is an artist-run project space in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is the collaborative intersection of four artists: Leigha Mason, Jarrett Earnest, Whitney Vangrin, and Alex Sloane. 1:1 is a ratio that employs the infinite coexistence of Genesis and Chaos—it is not a neutrality nor a cancellation nor an equality. It is presence in action. Like a hellmouth yawning open in an unexpected and specific moment, 1:1 reserves the right to freely transmute its own form. We see 1:1 not only as a rupture in space, but also in time, as much a discursive juncture as a physical location. Made up of a sequence of exhibitions, events, statements and gestures, it is interested in tearing down the structures for exhibiting and distributing art not to install a new “institution,” but to ignite shifting forms and potential strategies for a renewed engagement with living.
We work with painting, sculpture, film/video, and performance in tandem with frequent events. Because 1:1 is an art project, and not a gallery, we make curatorial decisions in a similar fashion to the formal decisions of painting—several million aesthetic judgments that archive up to something incalculably greater. Our devotion to a vast array of artistic forms leaves us with no regard for orthodoxy of any kind, artistic or political, and necessarily situates our practice at odds with the priorities of the market. Our only methodological approach is Play. Playing as a strategy is defined both by its commitment to pleasure (by virtue of the fact that it is fun), and by presentness (one must be fully engaged in the action at hand). The work we draw into 1:1 is united by this underlying commitment to our expanded sense of play: a sensibility that sees pleasure, active engagement, and a move toward openness as its purpose.
Our programming for last April is a clear testimony to this commitment; 1:1 organized and hosted Performances for the Cruellest Month, a schedule of one performance each week, all of which accumulated into an exhibition of related objects and energies in the space. The first piece, titlet Banquet for Artaud, was a week-long open process of gathering vanitas and feast preparations (fresh and spoiled fruit, vegetables, flowers, candles, bones, etc.) which amassed a table that ran the entire length of the space. Banquet for Artaud climaxed in an evening of eating, drinking, and actions orchestrated by a number of poets, dancers, musicians, and visual artists. Lit by candlelight, the performers were unannounced and did their pieces in various parts of the gallery before melting back into the crowd over the course of the evening, blurring thresholds in a mixture of celebratory and aggressive intents. During a particularly powerful and sexual performance by Marie Karlberg and Leigha Mason, two male guests were spontaneously aroused to flip the entire banquet table onto the performance (then run away). The reaction was unwelcome, but it moved everyone present to, in unison, correct the table, and shovel the mess and debris of feast remnants from the floor back to the table. As Gaspar Claus played cello, the entirety of audience and performers dirtied themselves with heaps of rotten fruits, vegetables, and broken glass as everyone worked to re-set the table.
We see making and exhibiting work as an invitation—it can be engaged with or not, but extending such an offering to the world is a potent, if not inherently political, gesture in itself. 1:1 constantly interrogates this pact between artist, audience, and social context.
We are interested in seizing a tangible site as an art project because it is the most direct way for us to play with the radical social possibilities of looking and thinking together. Even when 1:1 gathers artworks for a more straightforward exhibition, we do not approach it as an “arrangement of objects”, but as an “organization of space” both social and phenomenal. We are orchestrating the spaces between things, people, ideas, and practices, which is the very concept of discourse.
Ours is a discourse oscillating between physical and immaterial. This perception of claiming and constructing space is obviously especially urgent in a city like New York, where space is a privilege and art history is dense. 1:1 remains indebted to the trajectory of alternative art spaces in New York, but seeks to respond and contribute to contemporary conditions. By taking residence in the Lower East Side, we are not only aware of the intense and beautiful histories of the neighborhood, but also keep close relationships with other current nearby spaces we love and respect such as CAGE, Participant Inc., Invisible Exports, and others. We also work closely with Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. Our February exhibition All The Best People will be looking directly at these histories, considering for instance, the gallery young Dan Graham had for a year before it went broke — a playfully morbid reflection 1:1’s temporality.
