Social Security
Social Security
November 30th, 2012-
February 2nd, 2013
Social Security is a constellation of 5 ‘gallery kits’ individually curated by area alternative spaces that have shuttered or shifted form within the past year, including Cosign Projects, Los Caminos, Pig Slop, Proper Gallery and PSTL Gallery.
Opening Reception:
November 30th, 2012 from 7pm - 10pm
The exhibition will explore the tenuous landscape artist-run and alternative spaces inhabit and offer a glimpse into how the arts community is evolving in the present moment.
By literally creating “several spaces in a space,” the show will present a condensed insight into each curator’s point-of-view, as well as examining how they interact and shape the viewer’s conception of one another. Exploring the idea of social safety nets and the impermanence often built in to artist-led and alternative arts projects, the exhibition presents individuals, collaboratives, and a community retiring to an uncertain concept.
Formally, Social Security will consist of discrete exhibitions curated by the individual galleries in a series of “gallery kits” all arranged in a single space: Los Caminos will present a solo show with Bruce Burton; Cosign Projects will display a series of flags produced by Lauren F. Adams as the director of Cosign — a conceptual response to Cosign’s premise, formally united with Cosign’s other projects but also reflecting on what Cosign was, after the project was closed; PSTL has created a miniature gallery with a scaled survey of past artists’ work; Pig Slop will present a self-reflection on the span of the space consisting of drawings, objects and collaborative elements; and Proper Gallery will present a window display with Raleigh Gardiner and Evan Crankshaw echoing their previous status as a window-only gallery.
Gallery Kit is a project of artist, writer and curator Daniel McGrath, and is best known in its primary incarnation as Isolation Room, a kit curated by founders McGrath and Dana Turkovic in their St. Louis apartment that has presented work from Marcel Dzama, Ann Hamilton and Buzz Spector, Pablo Helguerra, Joe Goode and Ed Ruscha, among many others. Building on an ongoing interest in containment, the constructed room allows for the smallest possible collaboration between the gallery space, curator, artist and audience.
Social Security is organized by curator James McAnally for The Luminary as a part of the ongoing series How to Build a World That Won’t Fall Apart, exploring how artists and alternative arts organizations sustain themselves in times of social and economic instability.