The Therapist office
Exhibition dates: April 29 - June 10, 2018
Exhibition opening: Sunday, April 29 from 6-8pm
Sophie Calle, Le nez / The plastic surgery, digital print on 100% cotton paper, 27 3/5 x 19 7/10 inches
The Therapist Office is a group exhibition of 21 artists, 1969’s largest exhibition to-date. An assembly of paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs about the human need to daydream and document, the exhibition creates a more ideal waiting room in which to contemplate our individual experiences.
Almost always, waiting rooms are hell - in part, because waiting is hell. As we sit praying for negative test results, staring in disbelief about a missed connecting flight for that unexpected trip home or hating our too-proud selves for going to elective surgery alone, we look up and see neglected, ugly art. E-ve-ry-where. Tears begin to fall on last, last, last month’s Hola! opened in our laps. In a moment of potential transformation or whatever news, revelations and life-changing scenarios await us, The Therapist Office asserts the need in such environments for affirming, alluring and distracting artworks...
Like the fired rainbows in Quinn Gorbutt’s quizzical photograph and Chris Taylor’s multi-colored glass rubber bands. Vista-views from landscape paintings by Christopher Arvans and Kyle Utter alongside Amina Kerimova’s atmospheric paintings that brings the vast world closer into view. Jenna Gribbon’s floating still-life-during-seance painting upend art historical motifs and Matt Lifson’s narrative beneath thin layers of paint illustrate how lived experiences can turn vaporous.
Some of the works in The Therapist Office are made in the context of therapy including KB Jones’ drawings while in-session; Ken Griffen's stacked works on paper forecasts what therapy will be like for a 29 year-old New Zealander artist newly-arrived into Manhattan; and a work by Sophie Calle whose tricky grandparents booked an appointment with a psychoanalyst and brought the 14-year old Sophie instead to a plastic surgeon. In various ways, the works in The Therapist Office take us on a psychological journey, giving meaning to place and alluding to the absurdity of family, especially our progenitors who give us so much to think about.
Participating artists not by alpha-last, not by birth order, just as they are: Kyle Utter, Christopher Arvans, Matt Lifson, Vahid Sharifian, Sophie Calle, Chris Taylor, KB Jones, Robert Fry, Andrew Salgado, Quinn Gorbutt, Julien Gardair, Gary Gissler, Jenna Gribbon, Amina Kerimova, Pau Atela, Michael Polubiec, David Packer, Ken Griffen, Christoph Niemann and Daniella Brahms.