Vito Acconci
Ivan Argote
Pauline Bastard
Didier Faustino
Theodore Fivel
Luciana Lamothe
Peter Macapia
Josh Melnick
François Roche
Azzadine Saleck
The Small Where is a video installation guest-curated by artists/architect Peter Macapia including the work of Vito Acconci, Ivan Argote, Pauline Bastard, Didier Faustino, Theodore Fivel, Luciana Lamothe, Peter Macapia, Josh Melnick, Francois Roche, Azzedine Saleck, and Julie Vayssiere.
Curated by Peter Macapia
OPUS Project Space presents The Small Where a video installation guest-curated by artists/architect
Peter Macapia including the work of Vito Acconci, Ivan Argote, Pauline Bastard, Didier Faustino,
Théodore Fivel, Luciana Lamothe, Peter Macapia, Josh Melnick, François Roche, Azzedine Saleck, and
Julie Vayssière.
“There is a complicated passage at the end of Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction that continues to preoccupy me: ‘Distraction and concentration form polar opposites
which . . .’ This essay is usually associated with the transformation of art, perception, and aesthetics,
and it probes the future of film. But in many ways, the essay is also about the problem of the city, the
crowd, spectacle, and in fact architecture. I asked a group of artists to consider this space, as a kind of
“small where,” maybe somewhere between distraction and contemplation.
Although taken as unique experiments in nomadism, urban space, spectacle, anti-spectacle,
architecture, technology and the internet, the videos in this exhibition also have something important in
common: they exchange randomness for calculation and calculation for randomness.
They are in a
sense as much operational as imply simply looking – somehow condensing what we assume to be the
generality of space with a certain self-reflexivity, without resolving the dialectic. But equally important,
they reframe the vector from looking to being, as in Edgar Allen Poe's proto-flâneur in Man of the
Crowd, to that of the stray dog, which is measured in continually moving on from one small where to the
next with the ascending glance of the eye. The exhibition preserves the specificity of each, but then
allows the differences to cut through each other, constituting the possible other questions when
comparing the space of the city, to that of the landscape, to that of sound, as so many techniques of the
observer.” PM
OPUS is an interdisciplinary projects space opened its doors in September 2012. OPUS exhibits projects
by emerging contemporary artists exploring the spectrum that spans the fields of art, design, text and
information. OPUS supports, celebrates and promotes ideas, exchange, interaction, collaboration,
inclusiveness, discourse, innovation, and material and technical experimentation.
Opening reception: Thursday, March 7, 6-8pm.
Opus Project Space
526 West 26th Street , New York
Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12-6pm, and by appointment
Free Admission