Curatorial Rationale

I began my art-making process by infusing a love of the performing arts with my wandering mind. I aimed to display different escapes from reality, recreating my dreams, reveries, and favorite experiences at the theater. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, my lifestyle was severely altered and my art changed. Now confined to my apartment, I drew inspiration from music and literature, portraying the stories found within them as well as the relationship between people and art. My work took one final turn as the COVID rates in New York City began to drop significantly, allowing me to become more comfortable going outside. Due to this, the final three artworks I completed shared a common theme of windows. Within the windows, I hoped to capture the beauty and fantasy of real places and experiences. I had started my art process with pieces that presented an escape from reality by means of imagination. Now I had come full circle, working to celebrate the magic in our physical world.

Presented in an online format due to lockdown restrictions, viewers of my gallery will be able to click through photographs of my artwork. This format limits my curatorial options to choosing the order in which the images will be displayed. Following conceptual similarities and motifs throughout the work, I settled on a sequence that was mostly chronological in terms of when the art was completed. My exhibition will be discussed in three parts, following the three distinct time periods in my process.

Within the exhibition, all three segments are unified by their connection to dreaming. The first segment begins with a visual representation of a dream. The second suggests that a person had fallen asleep and entered a dream. My third segment begins with the implication that the figure has just woken up.

The arrangement begins with "Basiphobia, Cured.", depicting a mannequin walking a tightrope in the sky. I chose to start with this work because there is a natural movement to the right, seeming as though the mannequin is wandering into the rest of the exhibition. Furthermore, there is a natural progression from this piece to the next, as the one-dimensional line representing the tightrope in "Basiphobia, Cured.", is present in "Lost in My Mind" as well. Here, it joins a second black line to form a two-dimensional tabletop. The connection between dimensions continues onto the next piece "Sleepover", using the same black lines to move from a two-dimensional surface to a three-dimensional box. Finally, the last work in this segment of the sequence "At the Theatre" continues with the motif of black lines and centers a combination of one, two, and three-dimensional forms. "At the Theatre" is the perfect ending to this portion of the exhibition, as it deals with both movement and confinement. The characters in this piece move in their own boxes, but push on the surface, hoping to join the more lively and chaotic environment around them.

What connects the end of the opening segment to the beginning of the next one is color and concept. The two collages share dark undertones with tints of red and green scattered throughout. Conceptually, the audience moves from an artwork where they witness a performance ("At the Theatre"), to an artwork where they observe someone else experiencing one ("Tuning In"). The subsequent series ("Peter Pan") is also digital art. Once again the audience witnesses someone's experience with art, sharing his mind as he imagines himself within the story. Though the two works in this part of the exhibition vary compositionally, they feature the same person, and there is a shared feeling of whimsy and childhood evoked within them.

When progressing from the second to the third portion of the exhibition, we move back into the mind of a viewer, experiencing with our own eyes rather than watching someone else interpret. Magical, beautiful, worlds still exist, but now they are now an extension and celebration of our own. The artworks advance from the lightest ("Morning Bedroom") to the darkest ("Tram Ride at Sunrise"). This development of light to dark suggests that by the end of the exhibition, a period of prolonged darkness has arrived. But as the name of the final work reveals, the tram rides at sunrise, when the light is on its way. The reflection of the main figure on the glass window shows them moving away from the buildings and into the sky. This time, we look down onto the beautiful cityscape, rather than escaping amongst the clouds.