"Tympanum" at Wayfarers, Brooklyn NY
A review by Milos Zahradka Maiorana
A review by Milos Zahradka Maiorana
Tympanum brings together 8 different artists across a broad range of mediums. I found myself pulled in many directions like a membrane. My anchoring point was Sandra Stephens' video projection installation on the floor Towards the Unknown, a strange anamorphic natural landscape, perhaps a quarry or side of a mountain, suspended in the liminal space between imagination and reality. The other pieces that extorted the most gravitational pull were Zachary Fabri's body print on paper made with iron ore I Clean Avenida Canada which was connected to his video performance I Walk Avenida Canada. The print was exquisitely delicate yet possessed a powerful physical intensity. Leslie Fry's Plunge, a large figurative colored drawing on newsprint, startling in its dynamics and eroticism, the two figures, one human, the other looking like a sea flower locked in a carnivalesque vertical inversion.
Leslie Fry, Plunge
Tympanum was guest curated by Erin Gleason, artist, curator, and designer based in Brooklyn, NY. Artists Wendy Copp, Zachary Fabri, Leslie Fry, Paul Higham, Vishnu Seesahai, Sandra Stephens, Julie Ward, and Lindsey Wolkowicz all address the body as a tympanum between the outside world and our inner lives through the lenses of identity, technology, architecture, nature, and psychology. The tympanum, a thin, transparent membrane that separates the auditory canal from the middle ear, is obliquely stretched. As Jacques Derrida describes in his 1972 essay, “Tympan,” the tympanum also “squints,” separating the inner and outer world and determining the limits and truth of either side in direct proportion to its obliqueness. Through their works, these artists offer us the opportunity to squint, unlocking the double understanding of the membrane and unbalancing the pressures that correspond to either side.
Art Shape Mammoth is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to connecting artists to new communities and supporting the development of artistic practice, dialogue, education, and research through creative public exchange.
