As our lived experience is increasingly mediated by our screens, how can art remind us of the rich rewards of the real?
Return to the Real responds to this question through a series of exhibitions, performances, and events that foreground the multisensory experience of viewing art in person. The series title is derived from art critic and historian Hal Foster’s influential 1996 book Return of the Real, a theoretical exploration of contemporary art grounded in the materiality of bodies and sites. The work featured in the series affirms the power of objects and human presence, emphasizes the nuances and subtleties that virtual viewing cannot provide or capture, and honors the irreplaceable experience of confronting—and of being confronted by—a physical work of art.
High Touch, the exhibition anchoring the series, brings together six artists who create works that elicit emotional and physical experiences and stimulate our tactile imagination.
The Shallow Act of Seeing features three artists who employ wood as a sculptural medium to create tension between image and object, rewarding the visitor who shares space and time with them.
Allison Wade’s sculptural works exploit the intersection of flatness and form through the process of weaving. Annabeth Marks uses deconstructed and heavily layered canvases to interrogate landscapes, the body, and the boundaries of painting. Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola transforms materials with cultural currency in the Black community into animistic power objects that communicate the complexities of identity.
These exhibitions are supplemented by The Projector Room, a space dedicated to film and video works. Screenings include Bridget Moser’s My Crops Are Dying But My Body Persists, Flavia D’Urso’s Who Do You Think I Am?!, and a newly commissioned video animation by Jennifer Levonian.
By replacing the endless scroll and flattened experience of the virtual with the slow reveal and deep pleasures of the physical, Return to the Real reminds us that art anchors us in the present and beckons us to be here, now.
