12 Openings/Part 4

Friday, September 21, 6-9pm

We are excited to invite you to the fourth installment of an exhibition titled 12 Openings, a yearlong experiment in collaborative curation with unpredictable results.

Each month two artists are invited to install an artwork in or around the home of Laura Shaeffer, Andrew Nord, and their sons Sebastian and Jasper, making the private public and extending our understanding of home, family, and community. Both artists are then asked to extend the invitation to one more artist to do the same, thus adding two more works, and two more show titles each month. Each new artwork multiplies the connections between the existing artworks and, overall, constructs a cumulative exhibition that subverts the traditional top-down nature of curating exhibitions, replacing it with a model of artist-driven co-curation. The narrative arc of the show is not predetermined, but rather built upon the robust and criss-crossing networks of artists in this collaborative city. 12 Openings showcases the artists that other artists are curious about and allows these connections to shine as the exhibition grows. At the end of the run, the 12th opening, viewers will be able to see 24 original works by 24 artists, selected and inspired by their peers. 

We are thrilled to announce our fourth participating artists:

Michael Borowski

Address (Lost)

Michael Borowski uses metaphors of construction to examine societal values that are embedded in the built environment. His most recent body of work is a photographic documentary of Azurest South; the historic home designed by Amaza Lee Meredith in Ettrick, Virginia. It is one of the few examples of International Style architecture in Virginia, and was designed in 1938 by Meredith, an African American woman, as the residence for her and her same-sex partner. The house provides an opportunity for looking at race, gender, queerness, and the rural, intersecting with Modernist design. In addition to his photographs, Borowski builds sculptures referencing architectural details found in historic photographs, but that are no longer part of the property. For 12 Openings at Compound Yellow, he is including Address (Lost), a paper sculpture referencing an address marker for Azurest South seen in a black and white photograph. https://michaelborowski.com

Elana Marte Adler

Schematics

Elana Adler is an interdisciplinary artist and organizer whose work primarily focuses on questions of perception, signaling, and existence from both epistemological and ontological ways of thinking. Combining digital with analog craft techniques, she manipulates material in order to translate abstract concepts of space and time. 

Schematics describes the outer limits of a shape, the mortar outlines of a brick wall without bricks, yet they are formed by being cast within a system, a floppy exo- skeleton, bringing attention to the space they frame. This is the beginning of a conversation about modular mapping, interiority/exteriority, precarious strength, and fluidity of structure. https://www.elanamarteadler.com