r Emote

The curatorial premise for r Emote, curated by Wendy Ennes, stemmed from American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style by Peter N. Stearns, who argued that emotional excess is disturbing to American society and that our anti-emotional style conforms to the requirements of a service oriented economy and management structure. This evolving, anti-intense emotional style became so pervasive in our society that it is a part of our individual characters. r Emote challenged these assumptions of emotional control. The exhibition presented artworks that confronted repressed modes of behavior while simultaneously commenting on the politics of gender, identity, and consumerism.

Artist Laurie Hogin exhibited 17th Century inspirited Dutch still-life paintings using monkeys, while referencing the consumerism of modern advertising language. Patrick Miceli‘s piece, “Toys with Strings”, explored access in American society as reflected in his stringing of thousands of fast-food restaurant toys across the gallery space. Jean-Jacques Ringuette‘s presented life size sepia toned prints of anorexic male nude torsos. These portraits presented a dual representation of Christ during the middle Ages and a contemporary metaphor for AIDS. Rebecka Sexton‘s, “Wishful Thinking: Box of Tears,” used text , found objects and mixed media elements to address concepts of time, the cultural conditioning of women and society. Artist Rocio Rodriguez‘s figurative works on paper explored abstraction, and different states of psychological and physical healing. While video artists Georgina Starr and Ute Friederike Juerss both confronted issues of lost and loneliness. Starr’s piece documented herself weeping inconsolably in her studio, while Juerss’ video, “Handspiel”, employed only close-ups of wringing hands that invoked quiet desperation of repetitive gesture as the body language of grief.