Back to School
September 21, 2023
5-8pm

EXHIBITION
‘Back to School’ reflects on the artistic childhood remnants of a group of US-based artists. Looking at the original impulse from which their practice started, the exhibition is a celebration of the passion, angst, curiosity, and freedom of their first artistic ideas, experiences, and works. Often seen as mere ‘play,’ or instrumentalized within a psychoanalytical framework, very early works or ideas generally remain unshown.

The works by the participating artists – who have now made a career from their unique way of looking at the world – might not yet show the elaborate artistic skills they now have at their disposal, but they do reveal clear traces of themes, forms, and perspectives that have proven essential later in their career. Revolving around childhood relics, the exhibition functions as a way to excavate the potentiality of early artistic sensibilities.

Through drawings, sketchbooks, home videos, photos, and site-specific works, the show considers these childhood fragments “monuments to the possibility of expression,” necessities for establishing their future artistic trajectories. What has remained and what can be regained from reflecting on this group’s earliest formative moments and creations? Considering what these remnants meant to their makers, Back to School sheds light on early ideas that took the participating artists to where they are now, and foregrounds childhood as an interwoven part of an artist identity. The elements of the show are inextricably shaped by the artists’ environments. What means of expression were available to the artists as children? What remnants were valued enough to have been captured, saved, and archived? How were their expressions filtered through race, class, and gender? Journeying back in time, away from the heavily market-driven art world of New York, this project offers a reconnection to where it all began and what is still driving them now.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Ivana Bašić, Harry Gould Harvey IV, Anna K.E., Cole Lu, Florian Meisenberg, Monica Mirabile, Tin Nguyen, Rachel Rossin

Curated by Jeanette Bisschops

*Curatorial addendum: Growing up as the daughter of a child psychotherapist and a child psychiatrist, my parents both psychoanalyzed children’s drawings for a living, yet, they never believed art had any real social value in the world. I got my Master’s degree in Psychology after high school and decided to pursue a Master’s in Art History after working as a psychologist for about a year, so this is a very personal project for me. Rather than analyzing the artists’ psyche, I was drawn to early signs of their innate artistic language and creative impulses.

Opening September 21 on view til December 7