23/6/2004
Together Forever
CAG, Vancouver
An optimistic dependency lies at the core of collaborative art production. There is value in using each other – borrowing someone else's ideas, co-opting an aesthetic, applying an existing formula, utilizing another's tools – that generates a confident interdependence and creates a complicit generosity that is not so much about giving over one's ego as it is about defining it within a shared social context.
Assume Vivid Astro Focus, New York
Massimo Guerrera, Montreal
Revolutions on Request, Helsinki
Curated by Jenifer Papararo
An optimistic dependency lies at the core of collaborative art production. There is value in using each other – borrowing someone else's ideas, co-opting an aesthetic, applying an existing formula, utilizing another's tools – that generates a confident interdependence and creates a complicit generosity that is not so much about giving over one's ego as it is about defining it within a shared social context.
Each of the projects for Together Forever is built from an undefined assemblage of adaptations, reconstitutions, incorporations and re-enactments. The four members of Revolutions on Request present an aesthetic ideal, a discussion and idea of art making which is represented by a diverse collection of products and mediums that, when presented together, coalesce into an overall design. In a similar manner, Massimo Guererra uses and offers his material production as a language to form social interaction. His objects and installations simultaneously carry the residue of and the potential for building relations. Assume vivid astro focus is a name to be used, an erratic collective, an individual, a space for exchange. It is or they are constantly incorporating the work of others and amassing a mix of references, from pop psychedelic to Aubrey Bearsdley, in the name of sharing. In all three projects, usage becomes a viable means to produce work, giving way to a material accumulation, an aesthetic gathering that idealistically transmits the social.
Image: assume vivid astro focus with Rama Chorpash avaf 8
April 17, 2004, Installation View. Public Art Fund Projects in Central Park- A collaboration with the Whitney Biennial
April 17 - May 4, 2004 Between the Bandshell and the Sheep Meadow in Central Park
Opening: June 24, 6 – 9 pm
CAG
Contemporary Art Gallery
555 Nelson Street Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada