Each of the works in MIND THE GAP operates between and within signs in order to discover, tease out, and make manifest meaning that is neither obvious nor orthodox. The artists presented here respond to our world with particular intelligence and sensitivity to these gaps. It is in their natures to be radical, and each questions and provokes in their own way.
The title and spirit of the exhibition take their cue from Lise Patt's description of W.G. Sebald:
If there is a Sebaldian method, in Austerlitz we are given its opening line: "mind the gap" between words, between and in images and text, but most significantly, mind the gaps in (not only between) signs. Look at the spaces between seeing and not seeing (where you'll catch a glimpse of "the phantom traces created by the sluggish eye"). Notice the gaps between cards being dealt of pages of a book flipping by. Don't turn away from the visual magma, after-images that "leak" out from their moving sides. Pay attention to the momentary arrest of language required by a period, a comma, an "aside." Don't ignore the "whispered" secrets of the last spoken syllable hanging in the air, or the last written word of a paragraph stranded on its own line. Study those photographs created in slips of the shutter or captured in concert with bodily sighs. These are the gaps that open the way to the production of thought itself, to awaking, not anesthetizing, the creative mind.