Revel in Your Time
An exhibition by Durden and Ray of Los Angeles, California, USA and Small Projects of Tromsø, Norway.
5.-13. November 2022
Vernissage 5. Nov. 19:00
Artists: Ismael de Anda III, Marsil Andjelov Al-Mahamid, Arezoo Bharthania, Sijia Chen, Marit Ellisiv Landsend, Lena Gudd, Jenny Hager, David Leapman, Solfrid Lindblom, Alanna Marcelletti, Hagop Narjarian, Amanda Pownall, Ty Pownall, Max Presneill, Irene Rasmussen, Allen Terrell, Carson Vandermade, Valerie Wilcox, Alexandra Wiesenfeld, Steven Wolkoff
In Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, later adapted into the film “Blade Runner”, the androids, nearly indistinguishable from humans, are only given about four years to live. Are those years more meaningful for their scarceness and knowability? Is their limited time even more precious? Revel in Your Time is an exhibition considering the power and meaning that the promise of finality brings to experience.
Blade Runner was my father’s favorite movie. The movie came out in 1982, the year I was born. My dad died when he was 68, as did his father. I was 34 when my dad passed. I did the math – halfway there. Life’s short. Make … something. Make peace. Make love. Make art. But what kind of art: art that will pass quickly and say something about the here and now or work that will be timeless and stand as a marker that you indeed were alive?
Some of the artists in Revel in Your Time make work that might not last the run of this show. They harness the power of the ephemeral, confronting and displaying the passing of the present moment. Their work pins us down to the immediate and leaves only breadcrumbs of its existence in its absence. Others in the exhibition make durable artifacts that will tell our stories for generations to come – reminding those future witnesses that this was a hell of a time to be alive. The exhibition is a celebration that, like the androids, we know this doesn’t last forever. It fades, as the character Roy Batty says, “like tears in rain” - and we’re all the better for it.
Ty Pownall
Curator
Durden and Ray