Drawing on Likeness
Art and Culture Center
Miami, 2020
Group show
Concerning Similarities and Differences: Drawing on Likeness
Semblances, resemblances, assemblances, dissemblance, etc., all play in combination a role in how we negotiate our day-to-day world – by means of differentiation, we use these processes to establish the identity of things. But, there is a problem: by focusing on dissimilarities, we end up ignoring those less apparent aspects, qualities that differing things may hold in common. This “natural” process seems increasingly out of step with how we engage in “internet searches”—here the idea of the index has turned everything into assemblages of diverse characteristics and qualities rather than discreet entities. As such, our experiences and thinking stand counter to such age-old adages as “You can’t mix apples and oranges!” When presented as an undeniable truth, this truism implies that the mixing together or substituting of one type of thing for another results in illogical and confused thinking. Yet paradoxically, no more. Thinking through this lens led me to reflect upon how things may be alike – even equivalent – though they appear to be otherwise. It is this proposition that is the central organizing principle for Drawing on Likeness.
Art and Culture Center
Miami, 2020
Group show
Concerning Similarities and Differences: Drawing on Likeness
Semblances, resemblances, assemblances, dissemblance, etc., all play in combination a role in how we negotiate our day-to-day world – by means of differentiation, we use these processes to establish the identity of things. But, there is a problem: by focusing on dissimilarities, we end up ignoring those less apparent aspects, qualities that differing things may hold in common. This “natural” process seems increasingly out of step with how we engage in “internet searches”—here the idea of the index has turned everything into assemblages of diverse characteristics and qualities rather than discreet entities. As such, our experiences and thinking stand counter to such age-old adages as “You can’t mix apples and oranges!” When presented as an undeniable truth, this truism implies that the mixing together or substituting of one type of thing for another results in illogical and confused thinking. Yet paradoxically, no more. Thinking through this lens led me to reflect upon how things may be alike – even equivalent – though they appear to be otherwise. It is this proposition that is the central organizing principle for Drawing on Likeness.
Drawing on Likeness is a main course fruit salad; traditional categories such as painting and sculpture, abstract and mimetic, even subject and theme, no longer separate the works of these artists into discrete entities or categories. Consequently, though Ivelisse Jimenez, Gustavo Prado, and Lidija Slavkowic work with different materials, imagery, structures, processes, and forms, the deep structure of their aesthetic and approach to making has more in common than one might at first imagine – they share a likeness – a family resemblance; certain material as well as conceptual characteristics are held in common, though these have been morphed by cross-breeding and inbreeding. These artists in the main do not work to the same conceptual or aesthetic end – but they do work similarly. This is because each partakes of a general economy; subsequently, their works are political, appropriate culture, engage with the historical, are concerned with perception and cognition, and engage semiotics and linguistics, etc. By bringing their works together, my objective is to generate an environment in which the correspondences and differences between the works unfold to reveal what the artist does, and the work their art does.
