Saturdays. I hate working Saturdays, but the people are good, so it’s tolerable. I clock out at five and get home about an hour later. I get some house work done, start to get ready for a nice relaxing evening when I check up on Facebook.
Event: Archaiposterii: The Ides
Time: 7pm
Location: our MONSTER, Mullae
Riiiiiiiiight. Better shift gears and head out.
While my first trip to our MONSTER was a comedy of errors in the finding, my gut memory lead me quickly to my destination this time around. But had I not known where I was going, well, our MONSTER still isn’t well signed. Actually worse than last time.
But find the darkened entrance I did, and I climbed the stairs. Dark stairwells give way to mysterious doors. I enter the cave of the soothsayer.
Reflection
Ghostly images hang in the middle of the room. Are these faint memories of some unspeakable horror, or omens of horrors to come? Perhaps both. Reflection is a series of prints on muslin cloth of a performance piece involving copious amounts of gum, claustrophobia and confrontation of the fear of the loss of memory and identity.
Use As Directed: Raw
Gina Dargan
Flanking the funeral shrouds along the west wall, strips of cardboard lean against the wall, lonely and waiting.
I’m not sure wether to call the piece an ‘it’ or ‘they’ collective. Devoid of purpose raw material seems dejected, finding joy only in that moment when some builder picks them and tells them ‘you are needed’. But raw materials left out too long go bad. A short wait turns into a long wait, turns into desperation. Materials once for construction become landfill filler.
On the opposite wall, we take a different perspective.
Journey I, II, III and a Ghost Goose
I am an unabashed lover of maps. So these pieces hit a major zone of happiness and wonder for me.
The topographical layering of clay lends a sense of emptiness in the world. In Ghost Goose, a migrating bird leaves only its skeleton and hopes of journeys never completed. Perhaps an apocalyptic view of the end of all things.
The Journey triptych on the other hand leaves some sense of hope. We move on in hopes of finding a home. It’s up to the viewer to imagine if that hope is warranted, or they’ll become ghosts forever searching for a utopia. Existential fears! That’s another one of my happiness zones these pieces scratch.
Now, deeper into the cave we go, promising either oracles or shadows of the real world dancing for a captive audience. At the entrance of the inner cave is a reminder that some things are better left sleeping…
Cthulhu Loves the Little Children
With a little salt.
Untitled
Like much of Albert’s work, the twisted shapes of ancient horrors beckon to deeper unnamed fears of the loss of control over our own destinies and thoughts. Here it is accentuated by the vicious attack on a machine designed to give us freedom of movement. Whatever freedom we create for ourselves can be taken away in a moment. Perhaps this icon of the son of Yuggoth is meant to scare off lesser evils in the inner lair.
Divination
Body Series: Ben
Megan Ratliff
Ben is a fine name, but the abstractions of the body in this space makes it a divination. These scrolls were created with thermal paper, catching parts of a naked human. A closer inspection reveals thousands of individual hairs, each captured with stunning clarity. Forget reading tea leaves or the guts of birds. Reading the movement of hair on a print of a naked body is where the real divination is at! Now what would we call that?
Use As Directed: Packaged
Gina Dargan
The cross section of cardboard boxed up. The waiting of Raw is replaced with the anticipation of moving. Is it more waiting or is it the light at the end of the tunnel hazy from the mundane realities of our working life?
As if to protect the room from evil…
Weaving
Hallie Bradley
Weaving is positioned across from the images of Cthulhu and Divination. Put in this dark room we hope to keep ill fortune at bay. We might need it as we dig up the remains of
The Archeologist
Tony Clavelli and Amy Smith
Taste the rainbow! The specimens are laid out in front of us, perplexing combinations of the same bone, yet from the same individual. The femurs are actually cast from real animals, orangutan (left) and wolf (right), but the skulls and vertebrae are the fiction. These pieces make the room itself feel like perhaps it is the inside of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey – and rebirth awaits us after we toss these bones to guess at the future.
Seeing the Show
If you want to see the exhibit, it will be up through May 22 2015, but make sure you set an appointment with crazymultiply@gmail.com – otherwise you may arrive at locked doors.
The Tour
However, if you miss it, fear not! Crazy Multiply has provided a video tour. It’s good, but trust me, the immersion experience is tenfold with your own eyes.
All images and video are courtesy of Crazy Multiply Art Collective
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