Slow Motion, an indoor and outdoor art exhibition curated by Monument Lab at Grounds For Sculpture, reimagines the material possibilities of public memory. The exhibition will feature the work of artists who make their mark through unconventional materials and processes for sculpture. By experimenting with the life cycles of collective memory, the exhibition invites artists as well as visitors to play with the central question, “how can we remake our relationship with monuments?”
While traditional approaches to monument-making privilege durability, solidity, and myths of permanence, Slow Motion tests the material bounds of monumentality while foregrounding the urgency of deliberately slowing down. Each artist works with and through unconventional materials, embracing the narrative possibilities of material impermanence and the pleasures of slow looking. The artists present an array of multi-sensorial engagements with monuments and their lifespans, ultimately sparking questions about the very essence of matter itself; here, materials are not just a medium for monumental work—they are also potent makers of meaning in their own right, functioning as symbols of specific places, memories, and feelings.
The exhibition presents an array of commemorative practices in which monuments come to matter through bodily performance, movement, consumption, and even digestion. To that end, the featured artists offer playful approaches to monument-making. While some artists experiment with various compostables, others stage decay—not as a sign of failure or an aesthetic fixation on the passage of time, but rather, as material and temporal alternatives for how communities might build their collective futures. The exhibition contemplates the relations that are needed to sustain public memories, without degrading our environments and with respect for both human and non-human life.
By re-examining how we might remake our relationship to monuments, Slow Motion invites visitors to slow down and ultimately generate new ways of moving within and throughout their environments. Monument Lab will prepare participatory activities on site for public engagement with both the artworks and the concerns of the exhibition. What results is a series of whimsical, delicious models for public monuments that aim to sustain memory through experimentation and an ethics of kinship.
The featured artists are Billy Dufala, Ana Teresa Fernández, Colette Fu, Omar Tate, and Sandy Williams IV.
Slow Motion is made possible by generous exhibition support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Brooke Barrie Art Fund, NRG Energy, and Julie and Michael Nachamkin. Support is provided in part by the Atlantic Foundation, Holman, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, New Jersey Department of State.
Artist Billy Dufala at Grounds For Sculpture; Beverly Pepper, Paolo e Francesca, 1999 (detail), granito nero africano, 112 x 48 x 82 inches, Grounds For Sculpture, Gift of The Seward Johnson Atelier; Artist Ana Teresa Fernández at Grounds For Sculpture; Artist Colette Fu at Grounds For Sculpture; Artist Omar Tate at Grounds For Sculpture; Artist Sandy Williams IV at Grounds For Sculpture; All Photos David Michael Howarth Photography
