The elements water and air both seem to possess an aloof quality. They lurk until they want their presence known, like a hurricane. Water drips through our synapses and air expands our lungs like bellows. We’re beings of water and air, held aloft by the systems we create to corral waves and tame winds. This question of systems, of ways of understanding the world, lies at the heart of Space & Time’s new show, “Water & Air.”
Space & Time, one of the city’s increasingly rare storefront artist-run galleries, is a fitting space for an inquiry into the nature of how we encounter, relate to, and understand this often inchoate world. I make these claims as art and our experience of it are increasingly cosseted by private funds and institutional barriers. Storefront spaces, like the city’s long history of apartment galleries, is a way to not only open art to multiple publics but to transform our shared landscape. Curated by gallery cofounder Nicole Mauser and artist Sara Grose, “Water & Air” demands a group of 11 artists (including Brett Swenson, Scott Wolniak, Nico Pliskin, and Micaela Krol) dissect the questions inherent to touching, feeling, and being in the world. It’s an investigation taken up with deft hands, for all these artists acknowledge the frictions inherent to directing the currents where language often fails.
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