Aporia
April 1-May 25, 2006
Curated by Greta Byrum and Annabel Daou of the dB foundation
Opening Reception, April 1, 6 8 PM (gallery closed April 7 for special event)
Podcast audio tour* and publication available
EFA Gallery/ EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10018
www.efa1.org
Gallery Hours: Wed. through Sat., 12-6 PM<
For further information: Elaine Tin Nyo, Artistic Director T. 212-563-5855 x203
gallery@efa1.org
“Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett
APORIA
Curated by Greta Byrum and Annabel Daou of the dB foundation
Including the work of: Aaisha, Joan Banach, Daniel Bozhkov, Raul Vincent Enriquez, eteam, Rochelle Feinstein, Carl Ferrero, Monika Goetz, Nakazawa Hideki, Tianna Kennedy, Karen Margolis, Sarah Oppenheimer, Jim Skuldt, Allyson Spellacy, Peter Wegner, Treva Wurmfeld
EFA Gallery continues its inaugural season with a new project by the curatorial team Greta Byrum and Annabel Daou of the dB foundation. Their impossible show, APORIA opens on April 1. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog and a podcast audio tour.
***
Aporia means roadblock. It is the logical conclusion
that disproves its hypothesis.
It is the idea collapsing
under the weight of its own consequences.
In a sense, it is failure.
It is also the moment that most starkly illuminates
the true outline of the idea, hypothesis, or origin.
***
The ambition to create an artwork, to test out an idea in materials, occasionally leads toward an untenable conclusion: an idea that cannot be realized, an impossible artwork.
What would artists make if they were free to fail, to give in to ambition without constraint? — if they were not limited by material circumstances, nor by anxiety over their work’s reception, nor by their own faculties and resources? — if, in fact, they were imagining something which could never be realized in this world?
In order to open up notions of ambition and failure for necessary re-examination, APORIA will “present” artworks that are the products of impossible ambition. The curators have invited artists to experiment freely and wildly, constrained only by the reach of individual imagination.
*Bring your iPod! a podcast audio tour will be available for download at the show or at www.aporia-heuristic.com . Commentary & tours throughout duration of show by dB foundation members Annabel Daou and Greta Byrum, as well as Visiting- and Long-Distance Impossibility Consultants, and Arbiter and Adumbrater of Realization Potential, Tim Partridge.
***
The dB foundation is a curatorial group devoted to form. In each project, a given form is explored: the room, the book, the war, the letter, the impossible. Sometimes a form is discovered only when it is dismantled. Sometimes the form can only be discerned using sound, mirrors, paper, or emptiness.
This exhibition is presented by the EFA Gallery, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, with additional support from The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, and Peter C. Gould. iPod shuffles courtesy of Tekserve ( www.tekserve.com ). Vodka courtesy of Boru Vodka ( www.boru.com ).
The EFA Gallery is located in the EFA Studio Center in mid-town Manhattan. The gallery supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the frame work in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture.
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist’s creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.
