Sweet Gongs Vibrating

2016

Artists

Cooper Baker (San Diego), Francisca Benitez (New York), Diane Borsato (Toronto), Stefani Byrd (San Diego), Kate Clark (San Diego), Raphaëlle de Groot (Montreal), Anne Gibbs (Cardiff), Brian Goeltzenleuchter & Anna van Suchtelen (San Diego), Wendy Jacob (Boston), Aaron McPeake (London), Darrin Martin (San Francisco), Christof Migone (Toronto), Tim Murray-Browne (London), Margaret Noble (San Diego), Carmen Papalia (Vancouver), Anthony Ptak (New York), Steve Roden (Los Angeles), Aren Skalman and artists from the Blind Community Center of San Diego who participated in the Horton Plaza workshops (San Diego), and Funda Susamoglu (Ankara)

Sweet Gongs Vibrating was a multimedia, multisensory exhibition that broke with the ocularcentric by embracing myriad modes of perception. Imagine learning new information about a body, a material or a place through the sweet taste of ice-cream, or the gong of a sculpture, or the vibration in a wall. Through direct, embodied visitor contact, Sweet Gongs Vibrating aspired to activate the sensorial qualities of objects in order to illustrate alternative narratives regarding access, place and space. This exhibition included the work of 20 local, national and international artists (one of which is a collaborative) who explored the multi-modal possibilities of sculpture, site-specific installation, video, and works on paper, constituting an exciting and accessible template for how one might glean untold accounts of everyday surroundings. Each artist in this project had been invited to either contribute extant or create new, site-specific work. Each piece invites engagement to greater and lesser extents, provoking thoughtful critique on the methods by which sensorium can be activated through modes of creative and conceptual access. Several of the participating artists engaged and/or collaborated directly with audiences with various physical, neurological and cognitive abilities for whom interaction with art is not necessarily confined to visual perception. Sweet Gongs Vibrating advances a curatorial model for a contemporary art exhibition that can be made accessible to an array of complex embodiments. American Sign Language, captioning, and written and audio translations of sound and image were embedded into many of the pieces in this exhibition.

Venues

San Diego Art Institute

1439 El Prado San Diego, CA 92101

March 26 - May 29, 2016