CAN Triennial: You Are Here; July 8th – August 27th, 2022; Opening reception August 5th

CAN Triennial: You Are Here is a multi-venue exhibition organized by the Collective Arts Network (CAN) in Cleveland. The curatorial team has assembled more than a dozen exhibitions that will, at times, examine place and location, and at other times skewer notions of culture and politics, and also maps discussions around presence and loss. Together, these exhibitions give us an experiential journey through the literal geography of our city, and the ever-complicated situational understandings of place, context, identity, and–ultimately action.

An opening celebration will take place on August 5th from 6-9pm during Walk All Over Waterloo. Though the Triennial runs July 8-August 31, Waterloo Arts’ exhibition will conclude on August 27. More information on CAN’s website.

YOU ARE HERE: Scene and Seen exhibition statement by curator Kristin Rogers:
“In his essay “Romancing the Looky-loos,” Dave Hickey posits two types of people encountering art (ultimately, “the arts” in general). But, there are those who he’d call “participants” and others named “spectators.” It’s easy to infer which persona would be nicknamed a “Looky-loo.” Of course, it’s with derision that one would receive that label and, at all costs, one would want to avoid being described as such. As Hickey opines, “…while spectators must be lured, participants just appear, looking for that new thing—the thing they always wanted to see—or the old thing that might be seen anew—and having seen it, they seek to invest that thing with new value.” The artists, here, are the participants in this equation.

While Hickey’s thesis specifically skewers audience and the ways in which viewership can be participatory or, conversely, bankrupt and reduced to spectacle–this exhibition examines the same notion, but from the inside/out. YOU ARE HERE: Scene and Seen is a compendium of artists who are the careful lookers, the investigators and chroniclers of our collective world. In other words, borrowing Hickey’s taxonomy of gallery-goers, this exhibition instead features participant-artists as the journalists and biographers, as the storytellers and keepers of the past, and even the forfending tellers of our many possible future(s). These artists are the exact opposite of a looky-loo.

This exhibition participates in memory and reflects back as equally as it looks forward with curiosity and hypothesis. As the exhibition unpacks “what was,” there’s equal attention to asking “what if.” At times diaristic and personal, sometimes declarative or archaeological, these artworks individually and collectively work to uncover and understand that which is so often universal. And, the artists accomplish this with complexity and care–the ‘investment of new value’ with which Hickey describes a true participant. Theirs are artworks that remind us to always look closely, despite the foggy fade of the past. They challenge us to be present, not just in the presence. To “Show-up!” as it were. They stage the scene both near and far with incredible attention to detail, all the while insistent that there’s always more to be seen.”

Artists include:
Zeerak Ahmed, Karen D Beckwith, Orville Brown, Anitra Frazier, Michael Gannon, Gwendolyn Garth, Frank Hadzima, Julius Lyles, kasumi, David King, Max Markwald, Amber Glendell McClendon, Max McMillen, Rita Montlack, Sarah Paul, Bellamy Printz, Eric Rippert, Lasaundra Robinson, Arnold Tunstall, and Douglas Max Utter.

Each neighborhood will host a reception for its participating galleries: 
July 8: Triennial opening party at Morgan Conservatory
July 14:    Playhouse Square (Bonfoey and CSU Galleries)
July 15:    ArtNeo at 78th Street Studios
July 21:    St. Clair / Superior (Zygote Press and Morgan Conservatory)
July 22:    Clark Fulton (FIG, Pivot Center, and Hildebrandt)
July 29:    University Circle (Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, Sculpture Center, and CIA Ann and Norman Roulet Student + Alumni Gallery)
August 5:     North Collinwood (Praxis Fiber Workshop, Waterloo Arts, William Busta Projects, and BRICK Ceramic Studio)

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