John Muse: Extra Medium

In Extra Medium / John Muse, the gallery is divided: in the front, clusters of framed collages, a vitrine of journals and smaller works, and a large video projection of cut and painted paper; in the back, a studio where Muse works for the duration of the exhibition on more video, more collages, and more journals. Employing everyday tools, a modest vocabulary of shapes and forms, and found and made materials, Muse makes images that invite sustained attention, blunt swift decoding, and probe the difference between abstraction and figuration. Curated by Homay King, the exhibition is accompanied by a broadsheet publication, a program of Muse’s short films, and interactive games featuring guest collaborators. 

The exhibition concludes with the event Everything Must Go! on Wednesday, Oct 11, 4:30pm. at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, where Muse and curator Homay King give away ALL the works in the show to you, the members of the audience. A raffle and exchange of soft obligations, this closing event promises to send everyone present home with one of the artist’s works. Everything Must Go! imagines an alternative, non-market-based economy for the circulation of art, and sends each work off to an indeterminate afterlife potentially modeled on care, stewardship, and a promise to document an image in its future habitat. Learn more here. 

John Muse writes criticism, teaches visual studies at Haverford College, and makes experimental films, multi-channel installation works, collages, and paintings.  Muse is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at Haverford College where he also directs VCAM (the Visual Culture, Arts, and Media facility) and the Visual Studies Program. Muse has written critical essays about the work of Markus Baenziger, Roland Barthes, Suzanne Bocanegra, Victor Burgin, Nomi Talisman & Dee Hibbert-Jones, Amy Hicks, Roni Horn, Mary Lydon, Yoonmi Nam, Avital Ronell, Dread Scott, Lee Walton, and others. His films are distributed by the Video Data Bank; his writings can be found at academic.edu.

Homay King is Professor in the Department of History of Art and co-founder of the Program in Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of Virtual Memory: Time-based Art and the Dream of Digitality (Duke UP, 2015), which won the Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award of Distinction from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier (Duke UP, 2010), which provided inspiration for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s China: Through the Looking Glass. 

Extra Medium / John Muse is made possible with support from The John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Haverford College Distinguished Visitors Program.

Contact: Matthew Callinan, mcallina [​at​] haverford.edu
Hours: Monday–Friday: 11am–5pm / Wednesday: 11am–8pm / Saturday–Sunday: 12pm–5pm.

Events
Studio hours: September 8–October 13, daily, 3–4:30pm in the gallery
Opening: September 8, 4:30–7pm
Films: September 21, 4:30–6pm, with John Muse, Jeanne C. Finley, Brendamaris Rodriguez, Mason Rosenthal, & Homay King, VCAM Screening Room
The Shape Game: October 4, 4:30–6pm, VCAM Lounge
Everything Must Go!: October 11, 4:30–6pm, John Muse and curator Homay King give away all the works in the show!