Press Release Archive
FUNCTION
PRESS RELEASE
Gallery Project
215 South Fourth Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
www.thegalleryproject.com
734-997-7012
FUNCTION AT GALLERY PROJECT
Gallery Project presents Function, a largely 3-D exhibit featuring 16 regional artists who deconstruct the modernist barriers and boundaries between form and function and between fine and utilitarian artworks. Function defines design as structure and utility as aesthetic forms. In engineered material and conceptual space, it manifests contemporary Craft. The exhibit runs from Wednesday, May 9 to Sunday, June 17. The opening reception is on Friday, May 11 from 6-9.
The early American modern architect, Louis Sullivan, who stated that design is a reflection of material, structural, and social functions, infamously declared: “form ever follows function.”
The exhibit, curated by Joshua Smith, art professor at Concordia College, poses the very question of functionality in our mechanical landscape and contemporary society. Function points a finger at a civilization textured with object making, tools, devices, products, consumerism, mechanization, and the comfortable existence that such objects and design afford.
Function finds passion in process. This exhibition is tactilely and viscerally infused with the smell, smoke, fire, dust, wax, dye, sand, grind, and joining of object making. The show collects works and objects from various artists who delve into the idea, concept, utility, and aesthetic of “function”. Some of the exhibition’s artists make artwork that succinctly “works”, others find an aesthetic in the Industrially manufactured and discarded, or in objects of practical utility made non-functional. Some work shifts perception of an object’s functional role, while still others explore a new visual language from a memory of our industrialized, and post-industrialized society.
The visitor is welcomed into the visually tactile experience of smart design, material awareness, visual culture, social function, and then allowed a critical eye to view the objects that comfort, define, and challenge our society.
Vivian Beer says: “Form follows imagination, and function is a script for where and how we interact with these creatures we live with.” This is the starting point for the exhibit.
Gallery Project is a fine art collaborative. Its mission is to provide a venue for contemporary art that is culturally aware, individualistic, courageous, and thought provoking. Artists representing a diverse range of visual arts curate and participate in its nine annual themed exhibits.
Gallery Project is located at 215 South Fourth Avenue in Ann Arbor. Gallery hours are: Tues-Sat, noon-9; and Sun, noon to 4. For more information, call 734-997-7012 or visit the website at thegalleryproject.com.