Simon Preston is pleased to present Someone Has Stolen Our Tent, a group show curated by Paula Naughton and opening to the public on Thursday June 21and runs until Saturday August 4, 2012.
Bringing together a diverse set of interpretations, the exhibition acts as a nexus to activate thought and consider modes of perception and construction of meaning. The title is an excerpt from an anecdotal Sherlock Holmes story often referred to as ‘The Tent Joke’, that reveals the multi-faceted conditions of perception. Through re-purposing utilitarian or banal and familiar objects, the artists invert form, function and materiality, challenging our cognitive pre-conceptions. The individual works each uniquely de-center and disrupt the spatial order of the exhibition, revealing a site of potential re-imagining.
Steven Baldi focuses on the archetype of the exhibition poster, giving equal weight to the show announcement, documentation and artwork, as a mode to reveal the hegemony of art production. Baldi incorporates strategies of reproduction, deconstruction and repetition as tools to break down the typologies inherent in forms of representation.
Using systems of everyday life Frank Heath’s sculptures, Former Structures, are replications of distribution devices. Severed in half, the abstracted sections are then mailed to obsolete addresses relating directly to the objects former function, (defunct bank / library). These undeliverable objects
are placed in normally closed circuits, opening spaces of possibility, becoming anachronisms between the exhibition space and the public sphere.
Employing the familiar and repetitive language of industrial-grade consumer products, Zak Kitnick trades utilitarian design for form that forecloses function; the structuring principle of the object instead presenting itself as the subject matter. Simultaneously inserting himself and the viewer into the system of distribution and production, the work equates aestheticization with organization and reveals the ambiguous cyclical relationship between, art,decor, function and form.
Damien Roach transforms the exhibition into a continually shifting visual space. A system of hanging transparent screens simultaneously multiply and divide the exhibition space, and create optical walls that operate as distorting lenses or filters. Amalgamations of found images create circuits of associations and concurrently raise questions and offer new modes of perception, thought and visualization.
Steven Baldi (b. 1983), lives and works in New York. He has recently exhibited at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, White Columns, New York and Galerie Sfeir- Semler, Beirut, Lebanonamong others.
Frank Heath (b. 1982) lives and works in New York. He has had a recent solo exhibition at Simone Subal Gallery, New York and will be participating in Matter Out of Place at The Kitchen, opening on June 27.
Zak Kitnick (b. 1984) has exhibited at Clifton Benevento, New York, Harris Lieberman, New York, Shane Campbell, Chicago, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Artists Space, New York and a forthcoming exhibition at Ribordy Contemporary, Geneva, Switzerland.
Damien Roach (b. 1980) lives and works in London. He is currently in residence at Arnolfini, Bristol and has exhibited at Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, Maison Rouge, Paris, Tate Modern & Tate Britain, London and was included in the 51st Venice Biennale as part of the Centre of Attention’s Swansong installation.