Exhibition Statement
In 2003, shortly after joking with some friends about curating a New-Age Goddess exhibit in Chicago, I decided to take a Goddess show to heart, and organized a group exhibit at the 1-Quarterly Gallery. With considerable difficulty, I enticed a group of artists who were asked not to deconstruct the topic or turn it on its head in any fashion, but to make "the best Goddess art possible (within reason)." It turned out there was not somuch repulsion to fight past -- the backdrop of the Afghani/Iraqiwars did make the Goddess more palatable than we were accustomed.
I planned the second DFP installment after viewing Jason Robert Bell'sKala series in Chicago, and I decided to tighten the theme a bitcloser to my own working notion of the Goddess: natural/social/cosmicforces offering a cataclysmic rescue. But the current socio-politicalclimate has repelled a satisfying foothold for such fantasies, at the sametime that it warrants them. I aimed for an exhibit that could tenderizethis theme, letting it try to strain through subjective obstaclecourses.
Since the roster is built from artists residing in (or from) Chicago and Brooklyn, I began to imagine the exhibit as an invasion of one of Kansas City's alternative spaces, putting on a "medicine show" of sorts for the locals. I have been recruiting a few KC artists to act as an "interceptionparty" -- to work outside of the theme of the show, and instead contend withthe DFP exhibit in whatever manner they deem appropriate -- which will occurbeyond my curatorial control. At present, I have enlisted Beniah Leuschke(recently shown at the Telephonebooth Gallery) and Sue Friesz (recently part ofthe "Built Against Site" exhibit at the Paragraph Gallery).