June 7, 2014 – August 31, 2014

“Showing the Work,” an exhibition curated by Sarah Fritchey, will be on view at Franklin Street Works June 7 through August 31. At a moment when major art museums regularly program experimental dance on their premises, “Showing the Work”evaluates the stakes of this exchange.  The exhibition brings together eight artists whose work explores the meeting place between the artist, the performance and the audience and demonstrates how time-specific events might be meaningfully exhibited in the gallery over a multi-week period.  Six of the artists will perform a one-night-only performance during the show’s run, which will culminate in a roundtable discussion on the final day.

“Showing the Work” asks: How can the live, transitory qualities of a dance be represented during this exhibition? How does the “white cube” facilitate a critical analysis of artist-audience interaction that traditional “black box” theaters do not? How can the works on display resonate qualities of the performing body? How might choreography be understood as a visual manifestation that is alive with the possibility for change, truth, intimacy, and exchange?

The exhibition features artists working inside and out of the dance field who design individual systems of choreography to generate new work.  Many of these works will be on view to the public for the first time and aim to introduce the audience to terminology from the dance field, as well as to show the physical and mental work of dance.  The exhibition also rethinks a performance as one of an infinite set of outcomes, a living form that much like the body is in a constant state of change.

Likewise, the work on display will act more like a live body than video documentation and include: a floor-to-wall-to-ceiling pattern that is the map for a duet, a video that simultaneously presents four versions of the same dance performed in different spaces over the course of a year, artist notebooks that contain scores for emoting sound and recognizable language, a gaming device that proposes consumerism as a form of choreography, text/object combinations that prompt viewers to become collaborators in a recorded performance, and a lecture that critically interprets an early dance work anew.

Sarah Fritchey