Fri Aug 26, 8 pm - "Touch" Art Show

Touch - Don't Touch
Artwork is often placed on a pedestal, a sacred object that is forbidden to touch. In the exhibition “Don’t Touch,” artists explore both the sense of touch and the lack of it, while encouraging and forbidding the viewer to touch the work themselves. Annie Ryerson, through abstract shapes and curving lines, creates a tension between the seemingly floating shapes and one wonders if they will ever bump into each other on their 2-D plane. Patrick Morrissey, likewise, focuses primarily on the absence of touch, though in a more figurative way. In “Still With Her,” his “figure” is alone yet haunted by past body memories. Joshua Wilmott’s short films depict violence of touch, and one is disturbed not only by the violence, but by the beauty of the imagery. Cate Dingley’s photographs penetrate a space usually unseen—the dressing rooms of a strip club. The photos reveal a disconnect between the fantasy of the club and the reality of the back rooms. Jenny Stocker takes her prints off the wall and onto the familiar space of the coffee table, where the viewer can do the previously impossible and touch the art, hidden in a Playboycenterfold. “Don’t Touch,” a mixed media sculpture by Dan Crowley, is the epitome of temptation for the visitor, as its nude figure and soft textures beg to be fondled.