Points & Lines
Inaugural exhibition
LentSpace is currently closed for the Winter!
LentSpace will reopen in the Spring and will have a new sculpture exhibition shortly thereafter.
Sign up for our mailing list to stay up-to-date.
Sculptures in Points & Lines
- Graham Hudson, Canal St. Commons, 2009
- Eli Hansen & Oscar Tuazon, Use It For What It’s Used For, 2009
- Ryan Taber, Pompey’s Folly, 2006
- Tobias Putrih, Canal/Varick, 2009
- Olga Chernysheva, Anonymous Monument, 2008
- Corban Walker, Wall I, 2006-2007
- Olivier Babin, You Know, 2009
About the exhibition
Is it actually possible to overstay one’s welcome? It is, and as such, courtesy requires that loans and visits be of a temporary nature. But then again, the very notion of hospitality demands that with the mastery of the house comes the responsibility to accept whomever or whatever may be in need, without question and without reciprocation. Consider though, that for hospitality to even exist, a host must have defined the limits upon which others might enter with permission, or trespass — a property line, a national border, rules of behavior, and the like — while the guest must recognize and submit to these laws in suit. It is for this very reason that the words “hospitality” and “hostility” share the same root — the act of accepting the stranger is a means to compensate for, or even equalize their threat. These competing desires, to abdicate one’s place while still remaining in control, are the tension that binds all relations, public or private.
Sitting in the center of a temporarily donated development site, which in turn is open to the public during set visiting hours, Points and Lines finds itself in the precarious position of being not only a guest, but also a host. In an attempt to playfully tease out some possible implications of this dual-identity, Points and Lines presents seven art installations that each refer to different issues of boundary. These artworks, which each employ signs of traditional demarcation in a nontraditional, at times dysfunctional manner, allude to instances wherein spatial and social thresholds overlap or become unhinged as they revolve around ideas of access’or the lack thereof. Paralleling these concerns, the included artworks also borrow from the materials and processes used in civic design and construction, and as such, possess possible functions useful in shared space. The outcomes of these mingled agendas aim to open-up notions of what “delineation” means in terms of both geography and discipline, while also affording private, if not intimate moments for the visitor with an art object in the middle of a disclosed public space. And just like a word in a manuscript draft that is crossed out, yet still legible under that attempt at erasure, the artworks in Points and Lines doggedly maintain an unstable presence, existing as impositions, as well as offerings, at once…
…In closing I would like to offer this exhibition as a welcome to LentSpace. To this end, each of the artworks are placed throughout the site to address the space’s own unique thresholds and for you, the visitor, to discover these territories through each visit. Please walk around and view the works from all angles; see how these objects are connected, not only to each other, but also to the pathways, trees, and mixed-use zones in the area. Through the act of walking, various items will stand in front of others so that there is no singularly preferred viewing position. These plays, between concealment and presence, aim to form a string of impressions--none more privileged than the next--leading to a promenade of discovery tempered by loss.
-Adam Kleinman, Curator, LMCC
