one of our students, Mary Benedicto, is in this show

SUBTEXT PROJECTS presents EVERYTHING MUST GO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 17, 2009

FORT WORTH-Subtext Projects, a group of Fort Worth area curators and writers, presents Everything Must Go. The exhibition, which opens July 23, 2009 at the Fort Worth Contemporary Arts Center and runs through August 6, 2009, takes a storefront approach to the traditional art gallery experience. The works showcased address the prevalence of our society’s increased addiction to commodities and the marketing industries’ goal of eliciting desire, bringing to the forefront the idea that the language of marketing and advertising is part of the fabric of contemporary art.

While Everything Must Go incorporates artworks of varying media, the works themselves are physically removed from the space of the viewer by the glass-paned façade of the gallery (which will not be open). Viewers will see the works strictly through the glass wall, much like viewing merchandise from a storefront of a closed shop or department store.

Traditionally, the gallery space serves as a location of display and ingestion of visual stimulus and concepts. Though often viewed with sincerity and thoughtful consideration, art is also unfairly subjected to mere glimpsing and blind looking. Throw in the added barrier of a glass wall and the formula for looking changes considerably. The storefront window obfuscates that which is normally so approachable. Unlike the storefronts in your local mall that shelter various wares meant to tease the senses and drive you right into the site of commerce, an altogether difference mechanism takes hold when an impenetrable glass barrier is placed in front of art-curiosity is piqued and, on a good day, it makes you want to take a long look at the work inside.

Artists have often explored the relationship between art and commerce - the gallery and store. Perhaps most famously, Andy Warhol provided a link between art as commercial display and the loftier realm of fine art. With his background in designing Bonwit Teller department store window displays in the early 1960s, Warhol pulled this approach to art making along with his as he launched his career as an artist.

Using a similar language as marketing and sales, the work in Everything Must Go mimics the tropes and conventions of the profession to expose its falsehoods and inadequacies. As the exhibition’s title suggests, everything does go in regards to rampant consumerism. And the artistic responses to it call attention to this often faulty free-for-all. As the market-savvy term-noted for its ability to move just about anything-entices and deceives our culture, it normatively does so under the cloak of progress and improvement. Here it is quashed when applied to a closed storefront full of artworks-tempting, indeed, but only agents of provocation and never fully obtainable.

Everything Must Go includes works by the collaborative group Everything in Heaven is TV (including artists Chad Allen, Ben Aqua, Juan Cisneros, Amanda Joy, and Eli Welbourne), and artists Mary Benedicto, David Horvitz, Fawn Krieger, Jason Simon, Viginia Yount, and Chu Yun.

This exhibition is the first organized by Subtext Projects and is curated by Alison Hearst and Erin Starr White. They are both art historians and writers living in Fort Worth, Texas.

Fort Worth Contemporary Arts is located at 2900 West Berry Street (at Greene Street), Fort Worth, Texas 76109.

A brief viewing of the exhibition will take place from 7:30- 8:00 pm on Friday, July 24.

Subtext Projects will also host a mini-film festival of works related to the exhibition. It will be held at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts on Saturday, July 25 beginning at 2:30 pm. A discussion with the curators will follow and all are invited to attend.