This exhibition examines the uses and the value of tininess in contemporary art practices during the past thirty years. It focuses on artworks that are so slight - generally less than three inches in diameter - that they embody some of the specific qualities and issues associated with the extremely small, in particular, intimacy, a problematic accessibility, and a conception of the sublime that is playfully paradoxical.
At the Threshold of the Visible traces the recent interest in very small size back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when artists such as Joel Shapiro created minute sculptures that activated vast areas of gallery space, and Yoko Ono evoked the infinitesimal with tiny text-and-object works. In surveying the legacy of such art, At the Threshold of the Visible also focuses on the exchange between viewer and object. Examining the line between public and private, memory and community, this art beguiles us in a game of hide-and-seek. Indeed, upon entering the exhibition space, visitors will initially confront what appears to be empty walls and a non-existent exhibition. Drawn into intimate investigations, viewers reminded that meaning can only be constructed through their active participation.
Accompanying the exhibition is an illustrated catalogue with essays by Ralph Rugoff, curator and author of Circus Americanus (1995), and Susan Stewart, author of On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Please click here or visit our shop for more information.