Grand Prototypes, Humble Tools

FRONT International launches a preview exhibition that introduces processes, themes, and artists for its second edition. 

Since its announcement in January 2020, the second edition of FRONT International—entitled Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, after a couplet by Langston Hughes—has explored art’s role as an agent of healing, a theme that has become ever more urgent in the subsequent phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing social crises. This preview exhibition, whose title also takes inspiration from Hughes, points both to the boldness required to envision change and to the everyday tools that might help to enact it.

You may carve a dream 
With a humble tool. 
—Langston Hughes, “Ballad of Booker T.”

How can the everyday processes of artmaking be transformative for artists and their communities? How can art catalyze healing?

To explore these questions, the first exhibition of FRONT 2022, Grand Prototypes, Humble Tools, will embrace a uniquely transparent and iterative curatorial approach: existing artworks will be exhibited alongside projects still in development for next summer, and the show itself will undergo changes as artists add to, revise, and reconfigure the works being displayed. 

By previewing the curatorial methods of the show in this way, Grand Prototypes, Humble Tools intends both to pull back the curtain on the triennial-making process and invite participation directly from Cleveland-area communities. Visitors will be asked to engage in activities related to each project, and the open-ended installation—which will extend across both galleries of Transformer Station and include a range of media—will also be a site for diverse public programs.

Grand Prototypes, Humble Tools includes: Jacolby Satterwhite’s Dawn, a utopic CGI fantasy film developed with residents of the Fairfax neighborhood and Cleveland Clinic; Dansbana!, a Stockholm-based architectural trio, creating a Bluetooth-powered open-access dancefloor in Akron; Leigh Ledare’s The Task, a discomfiting film that emerged out of close involvement with the Tavistock therapeutic community; Sarah Oppenheimer’s I-001-7070, a participatory sculpture that explores the potential for visitor input in gallery display structures; seating prototypes by architecture firm SO-IL, who are designing Martin Luther King, Jr. Library on Euclid Avenue; tufted sculptures by Loraine Lynn, whose work expands on the idea of gathering; as well as work from other FRONT 2022 artists such as Dexter Davis and Paul O’Keeffe, who both live and work in Cleveland, and Asad Raza, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, La Wilson, Renée Green, Tony Cokes, Wong Kit Yi, and others. 

Art Therapy Studio, participatory workshops
October 10, November 14, and December 5, 2021 at 1pm EST
Transformer Station, with pre-registration 

Grand, Humble Conversations
Premiering every month through December on FRONT’s website

October 29, 2021: Jacolby Satterwhite in conversation with RA Washington and LaToya Kent 
November 19, 2021: Sarah Oppenheimer in conversation with Tony Cokes
December 10, 2021: Asad Raza in conversation with Loraine Lynn

Moderated by FRONT 2022 Artistic Director Prem Krishnamurthy.

Saturday film program
Saturdays, 3–5pm EST, October–December 2021
Transformer Station, Crane Gallery

Asad Raza, Minor History, 2019
Renée Green, Come Closer, 2008
Wong Kit Yi, A River in Freezer, 2017
 

Launched in 2018, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is a free, public, contemporary art exhibition. Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, the second iteration of FRONT International, launches with a preview exhibition in fall 2021, and the main exhibition will run from July 16 through October 2, 2022. Building on the success of FRONT’s first edition, FRONT 2022 furthers the Triennial’s commitment to the belief that by supporting creative communities and stimulating new cultural encounters in the region, contemporary art can be an important catalyst for positive social change. 

Press inquiries: Dushko Petrovich Córdova, FRONT Director of Communications, dushko@frontart.org.