Dissolve/Thrive: An Exercise in Collaborative Interdependence Exhibition

service=connectiongrowth=joy by Christina Jones

featuring the work of the Gallery Gachet Collective
curated by Rebecca Chunn and Robin Yuen

Exhibition runs: December 9th 2011 – January 15th 2012
Opening reception: Fri Dec 9th, 7 – 8:30pm, Art Sale + Auction, 8:30 – 10:30pm

At this moment in global history we all inhabit the same paradox: the architecture of urbanization bonds humanity together as a global community while simultaneously disconnects its citizens from the shared ecology of natural laws that sustain life. Our social spaces are filtered through the lens of a capitalist society which ‘naturalizes’ competitive independence over holistic understanding and habitually prioritizes production over people and environment. The growing sense of community dislocation, ennui with the mundane, and skepticism of spiritual practice are now common global themes.

“Mother Nature” is often depicted as a “victim” of overpopulation in media and politics. Many environmental and social campaigns hope to raise awareness on the urgent need to preserve wilderness for future generations. While these platforms of protest may be necessary and helpful to treat the symptoms of a fundamental imbalance between wo/man and nature, they tend to focus on the deficit rather
than the unity of this interdependent relationship. Often human tendency is to imbue our species with the right to save and destroy life, when in actuality we are being tenuously supported by ecosystems that thrive with or without us.

The social constructions we impose on our everyday interactions perpetuate and affirm a sense of false independence which ignores the reality that we are immediately engaged in a sentient relationship with everything around us. Awakening to the fact we are part of, not only a biological ecosystem, but a social one which is shaped by the process of cultural dialogue, reignites the transformative agency within the individual to re-imagine a social fabric celebratory of commonality rather than numbed by separation. By highlighting sublime connection within the context of the everyday or mundane we personally recalibrate our social lens while creating space to
affect positive social change.

This exhibit focuses on moments of everyday existence where artists experience a sublime sentient connection to the world around them. As a strategy to bridge the divide we experience in our personal and public relationships on a daily basis this project emphasizes celebrating the joy of connection in both visual and performative mediums. Ultimately it addresses reanimating a sense of the magical in the mundane as a way of addressing how shared experience is a desirable and reasonable alternative to the isolation of individualist being.

It begins by asking: what does reaching out for connection look like and how can we re-imagine our social fabric to facilitate community? Gallery Gachet artists were encouraged to engage and inquire into spaces of the everyday where they experience awareness of connection and purpose. Whether personal sketches, experiments in enlivening the mundane, or representation of relationship with nature, the show creates a space for work that observes the profound, ephemeral and uncanny in lived experience. The objectives of this month-long group show include:

* observing sentient relationship with nature in the everyday urban environment

* celebration of the joy of connection

* participation in cultural dialogue surrounding re-imaging community space and
personal connection to the world around us

* shifting perception of environmental and social issues from deficiency to
acceptance and appreciation

For more info, visit www.gachet.org or email programming@gachet.org or contact

Rebecca Chunn and Robin Yuen at chunn.art@gmail.com or rlyuenster@gmail.com

To see pictures from this exhibition, please visit our Flickr account https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallerygachet/sets/72157628527721321