Fourth Wall: Challenging the Frame
The job of the picture plane is to establish the boundaries of an artwork.
Its visual acreage is protected and reinforced by frames, pedestals, vitrines, walls鈥攅ven the space of a gallery itself. These spaces are places of opportunity, and their boundaries mark the difference between experiencing art and living in the rest of the world.
A boundary shuts out the noise. It lets you know what the rules are.
The boundaries of an artwork are intended to vanish, ignored in favor of its content.
The truth is, though, that boundaries are not truly invisible, and they are not non-reactive. The context of a work, the framework of art, the place that it is displayed, these are all part of the experience of the art. It is their ordinariness that lets them fade into the background.
What happens, then, when the 鈥渘ormal鈥� framework changes? When it is re-formed? When the fourth wall breaks as the art and artist make clear their awareness of the medium?
FOURTH WALL called for artwork that challenges its borders, its framework, its format, the physical and conceptual space it inhabits鈥攆or works that question and create deliberate relationships with their contexts.
For this exhibit 44 artists submitted 126 works from 24 states and 4 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States. Ten works by the following 9 artists from 7 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.
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The job of the picture plane is to establish the boundaries of an artwork.
Its visual acreage is protected and reinforced by frames, pedestals, vitrines, walls鈥攅ven the space of a gallery itself. These spaces are places of opportunity, and their boundaries mark the difference between experiencing art and living in the rest of the world.
A boundary shuts out the noise. It lets you know what the rules are.
The boundaries of an artwork are intended to vanish, ignored in favor of its content.
The truth is, though, that boundaries are not truly invisible, and they are not non-reactive. The context of a work, the framework of art, the place that it is displayed, these are all part of the experience of the art. It is their ordinariness that lets them fade into the background.
What happens, then, when the 鈥渘ormal鈥� framework changes? When it is re-formed? When the fourth wall breaks as the art and artist make clear their awareness of the medium?
FOURTH WALL called for artwork that challenges its borders, its framework, its format, the physical and conceptual space it inhabits鈥攆or works that question and create deliberate relationships with their contexts.
For this exhibit 44 artists submitted 126 works from 24 states and 4 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States. Ten works by the following 9 artists from 7 states were selected by a blind jury process for presentation in the gallery and the Manifest Exhibition Annual publication.
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