First came the pop-up, and now the pop-up within a pop-up! This past weekend the curating duo Matthew Gardocki and Catlin Moore of Mark Moore Gallery mounted their latest pop-up exhibition as 5790projects. Catlin and Matthew have been working and curating together for quite some time and have a true eye for finding some fabulous connections and correlations between the works of often seemingly-unrelated artists. The last 5790projects pop up was devoted entirely to performative works so this exhibition seemed much more staid in comparison but for its relatively quiet nature, the works spoke strongly next to one another. The exhibition, ele:mental, was made up entirely of fairly technical and technically proficient wall work but the textural elements were vibrant and vibrational as they existed together in the intimate space.

On the occasion of the opening of ele:mental by 5790projects, the artists of Beacon Arts Building also opened their studios to the public and invited artists from BAB’s sister building, 1019 West Art Studios, to fill in the empty studios. I had the great pleasure of organizing this pop-up within a pop-up that we called reaction:1019, and was very lucky that some of my favorite 1019-ers were willing to submit work. Some of the submitted works were pre-existing and some were made as site-specific installations for the BAB studios. This brings up, yet again, a major distinction that must be made more explicit as the word “curate” becomes more and more a part of our daily lexicon, there is an important difference between curating an exhibition and organizing a group of artists. With the exhibition for ZERO DOWN as well as this group show as reaction:1019, I submitted a call to a large group of artists who are similar only in that they work within the same building and then did my best to group the submitted works by content and theme as seemed appropriate. When functioning as a curator, there is a larger organizational or theoretical construct that determines the work, artists, and imagery selected to speak in the context of one another. That said, it is really great fun and quite a challenge to try to situate a rather random gathering of works and attempt to create a conversation between them!

Here are some images of the pop-up within a pop-up that was reaction:1019

From left, David Spanbock, Steve Daly, and sculpture by Rachel Kasten

from left, Steve Jakobsen, Michele Asselin, and David Spanbock with sculpture by Racher Kaster

Site-specific installation, Dark Energy: Things are falling apart faster than we ever expected.

Site specific installation, Dark Energy: Things are falling apart faster than we ever expected.

sculpture by Melanie Newcombe

Site specific installation by Susan Amorde, painting from the series Tangled Trees by Jeanne Dunn

In the foreground, sculptures by Melanie Newcombe, site specific installation by Susan Amorde, and in the background, Tangled Trees by Jeanne Dunn.