Curated by Jameson Johnson

About Contours of Meaning:

Bringing together a group of seven interdisciplinary artists, this exhibition is comprised entirely of site-specific installations that utilize the gallery space to revisit and recontextualize objects that reflect personal practices, narratives and histories. The works presented in this show consider the deeply embedded symbols, images and traces we rely upon to comprehend and navigate the rapidly changing world around us.

Ranging in mediums from sculpture and drawing to video and performance, the installations are not isolated, but rather elicit an interdisciplinary examination of how humans create meaning. A clock transformed into a musical instrument; a toy bathtub cast in resin; the construction of a sacred site; a display of relics. Together, these works invoke a broader examination of accumulation, ancestry, nostalgia and performativity. There is inherent playfulness in situating this work within the context of the gallery walls. Here, the viewer becomes a spectator to memories, experiences or happenings that are not their own, creating a sense of distance while simultaneously inviting interpretation.

Each of the seven artists work within Boston Center for the Arts’ Artist Studio Building. The works in this show were selected and presented collaboratively between curator, Jameson Johnson, and the artists—allowing space for the work to develop upon leaving the studio and entering the gallery. While some bodies of work present fantastical, parafictional or exaggerated narratives, others reveal historical, sacred and personal accounts. To this end, viewers are asked to consider duality and contradictions between the installations in order to understand the complex nature through which we ascribe meaning to objects, spaces and happenings. Considered together, the exhibition posits that meaning might just be situated in the contours of nuance.

Artists:

Leika Akiyama, Lillian P.H. Kology, Georgina Lewis, Allison Maria Rodriguez, Sandrine Schaefer, Miriam Shenitzer, and Nate Tucker