Performance/Light Installation
H7'x7'x7'
As part of Between Cornice and Cantilever
Curated by Lauren Klenow
Gage Academy
04-22 - 05-15-11
Seattle, WA

Through the course of the exhibition people can play a chess game with Iole Alessandrini. Please contact Lauren Klenow 206.323.GAGE (4243) x18 to schedule a session.

When we think, we become conscious of our ideas as images within our mind. But while seeming to exist inside our head, these images are also drawn from our experience of the world outside of us and they are formed in relation to these experiences as visual perceptions of potential "realities".

This installation explores the double scope of reenacting the artistic event of Marcel Duchamp's chess game with a nude opponent, as well as the visualization dynamics of thought that occur as a relation between the concrete, spatial dimensions of the chess game and the imaginative projection of possible moves in the mental space between the two players.

In the same way that the players envision in front of their eyes their next moves, we are invited to become observers of the interrelational dynamics between the visual realm and internal consciousness. Like daydreamers, we bring into our consciousness visual and mental images that seem "real" yet exist somewhere in the space between what we see and what we imagine. This exhibition invites us to collectively identify with this invisible and imaginary space at a conscious level.

During the course of this exhibition, I will be playing chess with naked opponents who, as models in the artistic realm, would otherwise be entirely subject to my gaze and interpretation. In the game of chess, however, both players are visually engaged in imagining a physical space while also trying to imagine their own as well as their opponent's potential moves. My hope is to provoke an awareness, as if apparent, of this imaginative dynamics.

Special Thanks to Matthew McCarthy, Douglas Merrell, Pino Cherchi.