Modified Arts, In collaboration with Eye Lounge presents:
Don’t let the palm trees fool you
A Group Exhibition featuring:
Phoenix, AZ — Modified Arts, in collaboration with Eye Lounge is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Don’t let the palm trees fool you. Don’t let the palm trees fool you will include work by Germán Benincore, JC Gonzo, Sara Hubbs, Carlos Miramontes, Miguel Monzón, Vincent Goudreau, Carmen Selam, and Karima Walker at Modified Arts Gallery.
Place, to which we claim or refuse allegiance, in which attachments form and are broken, sense memories gather and stick. Stories accumulate and dissipate, and inescapably, our bodies re-shape themselves to the angles and curvatures and textures of the places we inhabit. Art for art’s sake persists, is purchased and transported from galleries to luxury apartments. Art may be detached from one place, as humans are, but will once again be absorbed by and into another place, however temporarily. Nomads are seekers of place, one after another and sometimes back again.
Artists, then, always and anywhere, make work in place, or about place. Living and working outside coastal metropolitan hubs, we too often overhear chatter about lack: of a robust gallery system or a cohesive and well-defined local artworld. Don’t let the palm trees fool you brings together artists who explore what it means to be embedded in zones of hyperlocality. Rather than stopping here as a route to elsewhere, their practice is shaped by and responsive to the specificity, irresolution, and mutability of local lived experience. Don’t let the palm trees fool you exists in and looks past the walls sanctioned art spaces. It asks how art can adapt to fluctuating borders, and acknowledges that belonging can be met in equal measure by unbelonging and uncertainty. Gestures trace connections and gaps between generational and histories. Don’t let the palm trees fool you invites you to imagine the movement of art in concert with land, built environments and social fabrics, as well as the mutual imbrication of art and artists with the land, the urban environment, and the communities with whom they travel.
I have become most fascinated with artists who make work with and of rather than about; or for whom place becomes a medium as well as a subject. Most urgently, how does art made of and with this place inhabit the world, or the artworld, in an utterly specific way? How does it speak and where does it speak from, if it is allowed to live and speak where it chooses? What if we evade the center? What if we don’t ask for a center? What if artists find the center in many centers, by mounting an exhibition in a home, in a community center, under an overpass, in a parking lot, on a construction site, in a shopping mall, on the light rail, on the side of a road. Or, on a trail, in a wash, between two mesquite trees and a palo verde, in a river (forget the banks), in the morning, at night, in the summer or the winter?
This need not be a form of protest or negation or an act of defiance against the gallery system. It need not emerge from resentment or defiance. Instead, it is a way to discover what is already present or what is hidden. Artists’ work, conceptually and materially, is inflected by, made of, with and in place. As places change, we change in place. Art must change in place. And so, perhaps it must change its places, and in so doing, change our expectation of the places it belongs.”
The exhibition will be on display from December 20, 2024–January 12, 2025 with a closing reception taking place from January 10, 2025. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Soft Opening
Date: December 20, 2024
Time: 6–9pm
Closing Reception
Date: January 10, 2025
Time: 6–9pm
Gallery Hours
Fridays: 6 PM–9 PM
Saturdays: 1 PM–5 PM
Sundays: 11 AM–3 PM
For more information about Eye Lounge and Don’t let the palm trees fool you, please visit our website at EyeLounge.com.
Media Contact:
Yvette Serrano
yvette.serrano13@gmail.com